THE PRACTICALITIES AND PROBABILITY OF NORMALISING INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN SOUTH AFRICAN AGRICULTURE

Abstract

Few, if any, farm workers view their relationship with farmers as unproblematic. Their rightiessness, subordination and poverty prevents them from openly expressing their views, let alone acting to redress them in a way which will not be to their disadvantage. Farmers, for the most part, confuse this silence born of inequality as harmony and that it why it is so elusive. Normalising relations in the sector has to be based on a common set of assumptions which take as their premise equal rights for all. Only the smallest beginnings have been made to getting to that starting point.