The union representing farm workers in SA has welcomed the new minimum wage announced by government and rejected sustainability concerns raised by farmers.
South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union researcher Simon Eppel said on Monday it was widely known that the sharp raise in farmworker minimum wages was coming.
“The agri-sector was provided with a grace period to pay lower wages to give them time to prepare to eventually raise wages.
“Workers cannot be asked to sit on their suffering and ambitions forever.”
The new national minimum wage, which increases farmworker pay by 16% from R18.69 to R21.79 an hour, was announced by employment and labour minister Thulas Nxesi on February 15.
It is due to come into effect on March 1.
Eppel said there was furthermore opportunity for hard-pressed farmers to avoid the declaration.
“If there is genuine business distress and inability to pay the new national minimum wage, there is an exemption mechanism.
“It has been widely advertised and employers can access it so long as they have consulted their workers and their unions and if they have submitted their financial statements to prove they cannot afford to pay the full national minimum wage.”
He said the suggestion from farmers that the steep increase would cause a crisis in employment and the agri-sector was misguided.
“The real crisis is that workers are paid so little in the first place, and that farmers seem to be more eager to push back against wage increases and threaten to shed jobs rather than to take the opportunities they have been handed.”
Young commercial farmer Sinelizwi Fakade, from Ugie in the northeastern Eastern Cape, said last week the increase could result in the layoff of part-time workers and mechanisation.
He argued that the minister needed to take into account the economic challenges facing farmers at different levels and in the various agri-sectors.
Agri Eastern Cape CEO Brent McNamara said layoffs and a move to mechanisation were likely.
Agri SA executive director Christo van der Rheede said many small- and medium-scale farmers had been hard hit by the drought and the Covid-19 regulations and it was clear that concerns in this regard, submitted to the department of employment and labour, had been ignored.
He said if farmers could not produce food affordably and employ workers on a large scale, this would result in a food crisis and widespread upheaval as food insecurity and unemployment took root.
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