Barry Streek
The government is to lay down minimum wages and working conditions for domestic servants and farm workers by March next year, the Department of Labour said this week.
The department’s director of minimum standards, Fatima Bhayat, told the Mail & Guardian it would wrap up its policy on the domestic servant industry by March next year, when it would publish plans to regulate working conditions, housing and pensions, as well as minimum wages.
Bhayat said where the agricultural sector was concerned, the government could publish a “determination” under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act by the end of this year regulating hours of work, pensions, housing and payments in kind.
While the government has discussed the principle of minimum wages for these notoriously exploited sectors before, it is the first time it has unveiled concrete plans to implement them.
The 700E000 domestic workers in South Africa earn on average slightly above R300 a month, while the fewer than one million farm workers earn on average R400 a month. These two categories of workers are far and away the lowest paid in the South African labour market.
Bhayat said the department is still investigating conditions in the agricultural sector because it is quite diversified. Wine farms are different from dairy and fruit farms and it may be necessary to have different determinations for the different sectors in the industry. The determination will give minimum wage levels in the industry.