Restructuring paternalism : the changing nature of labour control on wine farms in Koelenhof
The central hypotheses advanced in the dissertation are: 1. Wine farmers in the Western Cape have, since the 1970s; been increasingly changing the form of labour control on their farms from co-ercive to co-optive techniques. 2. The Rural Foundation has played a key role in promoting and facilitating these changes to co-optive methods of labour control. 3. The changes to co-optive forms of labour control have resulted in corresponding changes in the form of paternalism that has characterised the relations of production in the Western Cape for the past three centuries. 4. Whilst the change to co-optive managerial techniques has improved working and living conditions for farmworkers, it has not necessarily reduced the dependency of farmworkers on the farmers, nor empowered workers. 5. Farmworkers have themselves internalised the ideology of 'enlightened' paternalism, with this ideology being fundamental in structuring their work-place behaviour. Trade unionists need to recognise this, and strategise accordingly. The empirical data that is used both to verify the fore-mentioned theoretical statements, and to provide information used in the construction of these statements, was gathered by means of interviews. Interviews were conducted with nine farmers/farm managers and 25 farmworkers from wine farms in Koelenhof, two members of both the Rural Foundation and the Food and Allied Workers Union and an organiser for the National Council of Trade Union's National Union of Wine, Spirit and Allied Workers. This empirical information is integrated into a conceptual method that draws from both the structuralist and social historian perspectives in agrarian social theory. In this sense, the discussion in both abstract and theoretical, and descriptive. Furthermore, the discussion is, at times, prescriptive, arguing that trade unions should adopt particular tactics in their attempts to defend and advance the interests of farmworkers in South Africa.
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