Decent work in agriculture: What is involved?

Where does the concept of decent work come from?

The campaign for decent work was first launched by the International Labour Organisation in 1999. According to the ILO:

Decent work sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives. It involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men.

(ILO, 2017) 

How do we define decent work?

The ILO identifies four interlinked components:

• creating decent employment  
• providing social protection,
• securing rights at work,
• enabling social dialogue

How does decent work improve quality of life?

Decent work forms part of wider social and and economic development agenda  which seek to guarantee basic rights and gender equality, promote human dignity and progressively ensure that workers and their families can access safe working conditions, fair pay, health care, education and training, housing and services. These  form part of a broader social safety net providing child support, basic income security  and pensions.  

Decent work adopts a lifecycle approach in order to develop a more holistic understanding of what decent living and working conditions on and off farm entail. This involves thinking about the needs and rights of family members at different points in their lives.

How do we ensure decent work in South African agriculture for workers on and off farm?

There are no easy answers to this question. Farm workers have historically been one of the most marginalised and vulnerable worker groups in South Africa. As a whole the agriculture sector in South Africa contracted significantly following deregulation in the 1990s. Subsequent agricultural policies which stripped away state subsidies and support as part of a voluntary structural adjustment programme had the effect of intensifying concentration throughout the industry while undermining the potential for the emergence of a small holder producers. These policies and process have impacted on the nature of work in the sector with the result that many agricultural workers lost permanent jobs to become seasonal or casual labourers who now live off-farm.   

Against this national backdrop conditions for farm dwellers and seasonal workers living off farms vary substantially from province to province and across different commodities. For example the labour intensive and export led deciduous fruit sector has recorded an increase in person days of employment. Earlier in 2017 it was reported that employment had increased by 40% in the agricultural and agri processing sectors of the Western Cape involving the creation of 127 000 new jobs.  

A recent report (ILO, 2015) highlights many workers suffer from a lack of representation and lack access to bargaining structures to negotiate better conditions with their employers & government.  Yet at the same time it notes that many producers face intense economic pressure to meet international social standards in a context of a sharp decline in state support to agriculture which has accelerated processes of externalisation and casualisation of agricultural labour.

How can social dialogue contribute to decent work?

Social dialogue includes all types of negotiation, consultation or simply exchange of information between, or among, representatives of governments, employers and workers, on issues of common interest relating to economic and social policy.

(ILO, 2017)

We believe that sharing information to link up and add value to existing social dialogue initiatives in the sector can assist local players to better link dialogue with practical action and in the process speed up the process of improvement in the rights and entitlements of agricultural workers, especially casual and seasonal workers, and enhance the quality of their employment.  

Does Agri-Phakisa provide an opportunity?

Operation Phakisa is a government initiative “designed to fast track the implementation of solutions on critical delivery issues highlighted in the NDP”. A recent draft report prepared as part of the Agri-Phakisa process argues that the increase in casualization has had “a notable negative impact on rural living conditions” sharply escalating  the backlog of housing and basic services provision, placing increased pressure on municipalities and rural infrastructure. In a bid to address these issues Agri-Phakisa has proposed a number of initiatives including:

• A National Agricultural Decent Work programme.
• A process to strengthen compliance mechanisms in relation to labour law.
• An integrated on and off-farm “Farm Worker House Ownership Plan” with a target to “secure title deeds for 2 million farm workers on 2 million hectares of land” and “provision of basic public infrastructure and services over a period of 14 years”.
• Construction of a targeted 333 so-called SMART villages involving local partnerships with commodity groups and organised agriculture who are expected to voluntarily make land available for housing and livelihood opportunities for farm workers in exchange for Level 1 AgriBEE status and a “market related state guarantee on current and future farm investments (Operation Phakisa, 2016)

The feasibility of these initiatives and the processes for localising them remain unclear, but it seems as if this could create potential for piloting on and off farm housing. This was also the theme of a recent Western Cape Human Settlements partnership summit held on 24th April 2017 which explored possibilities for Employer Assisted Housing partnerships.

Confronting dialogue fatigue

Participants at recent workshops organised through the Social Dialogue for Decent Work in Agriculture initiative highlight their frustrations at time consuming processes which fail to bring change and yield meaningful results. So how do we get beyond this?

Getting beyond talking

Dialogue entails learning, not just talking. The process is not just about sitting around a table, but changing the way people talk, think and communicate with one another. Unlike other forms of discussion, dialogue requires self-reflection, spirit of inquiry and personal change to be present. Participants must be willing to address the root causes of a crisis, not just the symptoms on the surface.

(UNDP, 2009) 

Making change happen

Social dialogue seeks to result in visible change on the ground. Dialogue around the decent work agenda needs to identify and agree on the priority changes that need to happen and to find practical ways to begin to make these a reality on farms and within neighbourhoods.

References and links

ILO (2017). "Decent work." Retrieved 9 June, 2017, from http://ilo.org/global/topics/decent-work/lang--en/index.htm.

ILO (2015). Farm Workers’ Living and Working Conditions in South Africa: key trends, emergent issues, and underlying and structural problems. Pretoria, International Labour Organisation 

Operation Phakisa (2016). Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development: Concept document Transforming the agricultural sector towards an inclusive rural economy 30 May 2016.

UNDP (2009). "Why dialogue matters for conflict prevention and peacebuilding." Retrieved 9 June, 2017, from http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/crisis%20prevention/dialogue_conflict.pdf.