“This state of the knowledge review sets out to identify the main research themes
and findings in the literature on labour relations and conditions on Western Cape fruit farms over the past 20 years.
The paper also compares if and how farmworker livelihoods have changed since
the heyday of Apartheid, and the role of the state in these changes. While farmworkers enjoy vastly more legal protection than in the past, most may in fact be worse off economically. This lack of improvement can be attributed to the state’s contradictory policy approach to the sector: while it extended protection
to farmworkers post-‐1994, it withdrew
support from producers, especially regulatory support that previously forced
them to bargain collectively with international retailers. Since 1994, international retailers have increasingly
consolidated and formed buyer monopolies,
so producers now face extremely powerful
bargaining partners as individuals and have therefore become price takers. To
protect their profit margins, producers
have externalised and casualised their
labour forces, and moved workers off-‐farm. The research points to the limited
power of the state to regulate employer-‐employee relations that are embedded in global value chains, and to the problematic of relying on a narrowly rights-‐based approach to remedy working
conditions. While aiming to regulate
employer-‐employee relations within its
national jurisdiction, the state has failed to insulate such relations from the
power wielded in the global fruit value chain that shapes relations right into
the farmyard. Such power relations not only shape the commercial relations between international retailers and
local producers, but also between local
producers and their workers. The review
also highlights the importance of analysing producer agency in contesting
or circumventing state policy decisions,
which ultimately affect workers’ livelihoods. Yet, the paper points out that worker and producer responses to the
impacts on them have been underexplored.”
