ANC welcomes R105 a day for farmworkers

James

James

MyGaming Alumnus
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The African National Congress on Tuesday welcomed the new minimum wage for farmworkers.

"This new government offer will surely go a long way in ensuring that we eradicate poverty in the farming community, as well as improve on their socio-economic conditions," ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu said.

On Monday, Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant announced the new minimum wage for farm workers was R105 a day, 52 percent more than the previous minimum of R69 a day. The new...read more here: ANC welcomes R105 a day for farmworkers
 
And this is after a feasibility study that showed that farmers could afford only R104.98 to break even.
 
goldfritter said:
The other side of that argument is that an industry that can only afford to pay R105 per day, is not a feasible industry.
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Jip, if at the end of the day your just breaking even then it makes more sense to sell everything off and invest it in the money market. Hell keeping it under the bed is better than losing 2c a day per worker.

Then we also have idiots saying if farmers restructure to lose employee and remain profitable then their farms should be nationalised. Essentially keep farming, go insolvent and lose farm or option 2 restructure, remain profitable, lose farm to government.
End result: lose farm, no jobs left for strikers, country starves to death.
 
Ike_009 said:
Jip, if at the end of the day your just breaking even then it makes more sense to sell everything off and invest it in the money market. Hell keeping it under the bed is better than losing 2c a day per worker.
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I was thinking more of the workers, actually. Living on R69 a day is ridiculous; R105 is still quite low. An industry that is built on paying workers peanuts should never have been allowed to develop like that in the first place.

I agree with you, though, that forcing farms to pay more than they can afford is a ridiculous way of solving the problem, for all the reasons you mentioned. A better approach would be to get more money into the industry via trade incentives, etc. and let that reach the worker. Then you get happy workers AND viable farms, instead of the lose-lose they face now.
 
I love their logic.

Farmer can't afford R105 a day. Strikers demand.

They started striking on 27 August 2012 until 04 December 2012 (when they took their leave), restarted first week of Jan 2013 until 22 January 2013. So if they only striked 5 days a week, that's a total of 39 striking days.

Assuming they only work 5 days a week:
39 x R65 = R2,535.00
R105 - R65 = R 40 difference.
R2,535 / R40 = 63
63 / 5 = 12 weeks or 3 months.

So they would have to work for another 3 months to catch up the money lost during the strike. However, since the farmer cannot afford to pay EVERYONE R105, he will have to retrench 38.1% of his staff in order to remain commercially viable. Take note, that breaking even is not commercially viable. It just means you don't incur more debt every month.

Well done farmers, you've screwed yourselves AND your ex co-workers over 6-love.
 
goldfritter said:
I was thinking more of the workers, actually. Living on R69 a day is ridiculous; R105 is still quite low. An industry that is built on paying workers peanuts should never have been allowed to develop like that in the first place.

I agree with you, though, that forcing farms to pay more than they can afford is a ridiculous way of solving the problem, for all the reasons you mentioned. A better approach would be to get more money into the industry via trade incentives, etc. and let that reach the worker. Then you get happy workers AND viable farms, instead of the lose-lose they face now.
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Granted there will always be exploiters. However, take into consideration how many farmers provide free accommodation and transport to workers who would otherwise have nothing. They are unskilled for a myriad of reasons which should not be attributed to the farmer's draconian rule over his minions. But it's fine, the farmers are being chased away to Georgia, Angola, Argentina and West Africa...then the workers can see where it gets them.

Sure, R65 a day is a lousy deal. Hell, I got paid R200 a week fixing TV's, VCR's, Gate motors, all types of electronics from 8-5, 6 days a week. Did i strike and demand better wages? No, I improved myself and got out of there.
 
Voicy said:
However, take into consideration how many farmers provide free accommodation and transport to workers who would otherwise have nothing.
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Right, this is a very important point. Back when Marikana was our national strike crisis (crazy to think about past events our country in terms of which violent action was making headlines at the time, but that's SA for you...) some lazy journalist quoted a worker who said they earn only ~R6 000 per month and they're demanding ~R12 000 per month. Imagine the headlines, shock and horror, etc. etc, and every other newspaper quoted those figures verbatim. Later it came out that with housing allowances, medical insurance, and the like the workers were earning ~R11 000 already. So that's an important point, that the pro-worker parties tend to turn a blind eye

Voicy said:
Hell, I got paid R200 a week fixing TV's, VCR's, Gate motors, all types of electronics from 8-5, 6 days a week.
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I don't want to pretend to compare your plight to another's, because I know the comparison will never be fair, but I'm inclined to believe your opportunities for "getting out of there" were greater than the average farmworker (education, work available in your environment, etc).

Seriously though, R200 a week? Ouch :eek:
 
goldfritter said:
I was thinking more of the workers, actually. Living on R69 a day is ridiculous; R105 is still quite low. An industry that is built on paying workers peanuts should never have been allowed to develop like that in the first place.
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Hmmmm the Chinese way seems to have worked just fine, that's why the majority of manufacturing happens in China. It is unsustainable though.

I agree with you, though, that forcing farms to pay more than they can afford is a ridiculous way of solving the problem, for all the reasons you mentioned. A better approach would be to get more money into the industry via trade incentives, etc. and let that reach the worker. Then you get happy workers AND viable farms, instead of the lose-lose they face now.
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To attract investment you need stability and confidence. It is going to take a while to restore confidence in the industry.
 
goldfritter said:
Right, this is a very important point. Back when Marikana was our national strike crisis (crazy to think about past events our country in terms of which violent action was making headlines at the time, but that's SA for you...) some lazy journalist quoted a worker who said they earn only ~R6 000 per month and they're demanding ~R12 000 per month. Imagine the headlines, shock and horror, etc. etc, and every other newspaper quoted those figures verbatim. Later it came out that with housing allowances, medical insurance, and the like the workers were earning ~R11 000 already. So that's an important point, that the pro-worker parties tend to turn a blind eye



I don't want to pretend to compare your plight to another's, because I know the comparison will never be fair, but I'm inclined to believe your opportunities for "getting out of there" were greater than the average farmworker (education, work available in your environment, etc).

Seriously though, R200 a week? Ouch :eek:
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I hear you and I can empathy with it entirely.

Regarding the R200, it's quite funny how people will take advantage of you when you need the experience.

As for my environment, I worked at night to pay myself through my engineering degree. My parents, as wonderful as they are, didn't have money to assist me with it. Now I will agree that I had the environment to better myself in terms of having a studying institution to go to, but it wasn't a flashy varsity campus, it was some crappy makeshift campus next to a taxi rank out of an old renovated building. I was one of 5 white dudes in a class of 65 black people - all of whom were not well off. Out of the 65, only myself and one other black dude finished our course within the 3 years.

When the two of us weren't working after hours in bars etc from 5pm-2/3am, we were in the lab until security kicked us out at 8/9pm. The black guy in my class could easily have played the victim like the rest, but he chose to better himself as well. I don't drink or smoke, so what little money I made I saved up and eventually managed to pay my own way through my degree in CT. Not everyone will get the same chances, but when people make it sound like I had everything fall into my lap because of the colour of my skin, it rubs me up the wrong way.

Bottom line is, life isn't fair, you play the hand you're dealt. There will always be poor people in a society with an oversupply of unskilled labour and where corruption is rife.
 
Thx for sharing personal story voicy.

goldfritter said:
they're demanding ~R12 000 per month.
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Its so out of proportion its not even fun.

I know people with a (hectic) honours degree behind their name who started at <12k...and thats a good offer too. Similarly qualified people got way less. 12k for farm work...jokes. Sure its physically hard work, but the economy doesn't measure or reward according to that - it rewards according to value added.
 
Might I point out that in a country with as much unemployment as us should be pushing to ensure the attractiveness of supplying jobs over the attractiveness of unskilled wage packets.

I know that living wage is important but I would rather we focus on creating jobs.
It just looks like unions and government are more interested in victories over the evil business owner than economic development. We are pushing for better wages and now employers are looking at outsourcing and mechanisation of production rather than dealing with current worker politics.
 
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