Farmers need a simple system of production or performance bonuses and unless they know what they are doing should not go in for any form of profit-sharing. Determining a production bonus is a very simple process of gathering all operational costs, including the damages caused by employees, and revenues into a simple computer based system that will generate the results. Agreement is then needed as to the costs and revenue to be included in calculating the bonuses.
It is suggested that banks could be the most appropriate providers of this facility because they have the history and understanding of the complexities of the farming operations they support.
This message needs to be passed on to the farming community before the “Second Christmas” scheduled for 9 January 2013. Peace in the agricultural regions of the Western Cape has been pinned on two extremely remote hopes – a significant increase in the minister’s minimum wage determination and profit-sharing.
The majority of farmers have too many operational worries to be concerned about changing business practices, particularly one as complicated as profit-sharing. That is why a neutral ‘agent’ is needed to help the agricultural community understand the business realities of farming. In the absence of such assistance the hole that is being dug at present will become unmanageable.
Sectoral determinations are not the correct mechanisms to settle wage issues – the purpose of the sectoral determination is to fix the entry level job cost. See in this regard Minimum wages are not meant to be living wages.
Employees complain that they do not earn enough – that is a living wage issue which is far more complicated. It requires the involvement of all parties (including the government) to determine the cost of living levels for the farming community, and ‘what’ individuals can do within the constraints of farming to improve their earning capacity.
The uncertainties of farming, from farm to farm, rules out the option of ‘collective representation’ for farmers and employees. Collective bargaining resulting in the violence and destruction of the resources needed to produce income streams that was experienced recently will destroy agriculture and with it any form of food security and employment in rural areas.
Freedom of association may be an individual right but its use in creating ‘collective representation’ as a business practice in an extremely uncertain and cost sensitive activity like agriculture, is too much of a simplification of a critical cost element in a very complex business process.