Producer perspectives on creating an enabling environment for freedom of association and collective bargaining on farms

 Social Dialogue Platform for Decent Work in Agriculture

Creating an enabling environment for freedom of association and collective bargaining on farms 

Tuesday 27th February, 08:30-13:30

Venue: Pontac Manor, Paarl

https://goo.gl/maps/KWgBpjUQwiD2

Workshop objective

●     To explore perspectives of employers, commodity organisations and standards bodies on what can be done to create and expand an enabling environment to promote freedom of association and collective bargaining consistent with current legislation, sector standards and codes.

Draft programme

The programme may change to reflect participant feedback.

8:30	Registration and coffee
9:00	Welcome, introductions and expectations Session overview	Dr Rick de Satgé Phuhlisani NPC
9:15	The Social Dialogue Platform for Decent Work in Agriculture - a quick overview ●        Why are freedom of association and collective bargaining important for ETI?	Hannah Bruce ETI
9:30	A research informed conversation: Enabling freedom of association, collective bargaining and union access to farms ●        Sector research by the Labour and Enterprise Research Group for ETI ○        An overview of the research brief ○        Methodology ○        Early trends ○        Researcher questions and issues ○        Report release date and presentation	Dr Shane Godfrey and Mario Jacobs LEP
10: 00	Questions and discussion
10:20	Responses of employers and standards bodies to online questionnaire on freedom of association and union access to farms	Dr Rick de Satgé
11:00	Questions and discussion
11:15	Tea break
11:30	What needs to change to create an enabling environment to advance FOA and the right to bargain collectively  as per Section 4 of the WIETA Code, Section 5 of the SIZA standard and underlying labour law together with Section 3.4 of the Fairtrade Hired Labour Standard ●        What do employers need to do differently? ●        What do unions and NGOs need to do differently? ●        What are current good practices that we can learn from? ●        How can existing social dialogue initiatives eg Value Chain Roundtables help create an enabling environment?	Facilitated break away sessions
12:15	Plenary Sessions to report back discussions from breakaways and discuss proposals	TBA
12.45	Next steps ●        A joint session in 5 - 6 April which will include: ○        Institutional updates on social dialogue progress in the fruit and wine sectors ■         Individual reports ■         Good practice cases ○        Presentation of LEP research findings on FOA and CB ○        All party conversation of FOA and CB ○        Discussion of draft farm worker housing policy submission	Dr Rick de Satge
1:00	Lunch

If there are particular issues you would like to have discussed at this session please send your suggestions to rick@phuhlisani.org.za