Promoting Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining and the link with Social Codes

The Social Dialogue Platform for Decent Work in Agriculture is organising a consultation with trade unions and farm worker/labour organisations on the 10 October in 2017. We would like to invite you to join us and input into this important discussion on freedom of association and collective bargaining rights in the agriculture sector.

The Labour and Enterprise Policy Research Group (LEP), based at the University of Cape Town, recently completed a research project to assess how private sector social codes can lift farm workers’ living and working conditions above the legal minimum. The research also assessed unions awareness of these codes and understanding of the potential leveraging opportunities to engage with codes.

The programme for the consultation discussion will aim to:

• Give feedback on the research and explore how unions leverage social codes to get better working conditions.
• Identify how these codes align with your key priority areas and how unions can engage in audits and their verification.
• Discuss whether changes to the codes; verification methods; complaints procedures need to be changed/updated.
• Reviewing opportunities for practical cooperation and engagement among worker organisations on the topic of codes.

The draft programme for the meeting can be found below.

Promoting Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining and the link with Social Codes

Date: 10th October

Venue: Kramer Building, UCT Middle Campus

Agenda: Subject to change

8:30	Registration and coffee
9:00	Welcome, introductions and overview of the session	Dr Rick de Satge and Claud Woodman
9:15	Labour and Enterprise Policy Research Group (LEP) research presentation & Q&A	Margareet Visser
10:00	Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining: What scope do codes offer to bring these rights to life?  Are existing standards sufficient? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the codes? Are you able to use the standards to gain access to farms; to organise workers and to negotiate with farmers?	Break away sessions to be facilitated
11:00	Tea
11.15	Plenary Sessions to report back discussions from breakaways	Claud Woodman
12.15	Breakaway session 2: Next steps What steps need to be taken to improve worker knowledge of the codes? What can be done to improve application of the codes to improve worker living and working conditions? What opportunities are there to negotiate a review of the codes to strengthen worker rights and benefits? What steps should be taken to address weaknesses in the content and enforcement code?  Are broader structures in the agric sector sufficient to enable FoA and CB?  Can we do more as a collective to improve deleveraging of the codes?	Rick de Satge
1:00	Plenary session: feedback from breakaway discussion	Claud Woodman