THE NEW WORKER

Premier FMCG’s chief executive officer, Kobus Gertenbach, earns R18.8 million per year in salaries and bonuses. Yet workers at Mister Sweet are paid different amounts on a ‘case by case basis’ – there’s no basic wage, and some earn as little as R6000 per month, even after ten years in the employ of the company.

The workers, members of the Simunye Workers’ Forum trade union, calculated that a living wage would be R19 500 per month, and decided to strike for this. This was always going to be a tough demand to win, especially at a company which sees no need to negotiate wage increases with unions, instead getting agreement from a tiny minority union to accept an inflation adjustment and then imposing this on the majority of workers.

However, the R19 500 living wage demand was reasonable and affordable for Mister Sweet. It also mattered in the South African context.

Factory workers across Gauteng are often the only breadwinners across big extended families. They must cover exorbitant living, medical, transport and education costs and still save enough money from their R6000 per month wage to help family members survive.

Food prices are high, as are school fees and transport costs. Many Mister Sweet workers spend almost half of their meagre wages on public transport – up to R3000 per month.

Public health services in Gauteng are abysmal. Most factory workers’ employers do not subsidise medical aid, and when workers fall ill, they often have to pay for private doctors to get a sick note.

Factory workers are also supposed to arrive shift after gruelling shift, at the factory gates, ready for hard labour at jobs that offer neither promotion opportunities, professional development nor a fair wage.

In this situation, the Mister Sweet workers are not alone. Their struggle for a living wage took place in an environment where factory bosses go to great lengths to drive down the wages of workers. Casualising the workforce, paying labour brokers more than they’d pay a permanent workforce, and removing overtime or night or transport allowances, are common factory boss tactics.

The new two-pot retirement system highlighted another tactic. When Mister Sweet workers tried to withdraw these funds, they found that their pension fund deductions had not all been paid into the fund. The Casual Workers Advice Office, which supported the Mister Sweet strike, is currently working with the Hawks to provide information for an investigation.

The Mister Sweet workers are mainly women. Some have worked for the company for 30 years. Their jobs are not mindless. Many operate expensive machinery that cooks sweets and churns them out on a massive scale. Two workers who were hired to run complicated machines during the strike without adequate training had their fingers chopped off by the machines. This highlights the complexity of their jobs.

The strike also exposed the apartheid wage gap between the CEO and ordinary workers. It called into question the matter of how factory workers should respond to living in the most unequal country in the world. Should they strive for a wage that allows them to survive, eat meals, buy essentials like deodorant, toothpaste, soap and blankets to stay warm in winter? Or should they remain silent and live in utter poverty, while being told they are lucky to have jobs that pay more than R2000 per month?

Workers are entitled to be happy. The Global Happiness Index weighs peoples’ satisfaction with life against social benefits like health, education, housing, and access to energy. Workers have a right to enjoy life, to not suffer like those who worked in Britain’s 17th-century workhouses.

The Mister Sweet strike was a courageous bid to place the burning issue of a living wage for factory workers in expensive cities on the public agenda. The Mister Sweet and other factory workers are far out of sight of the public eye, making products they can never afford to buy for their families.

The Mister Sweet strike should spark a genuine reflection and public discussion about the oppressive approach that factory bosses still hold towards workers in post-apartheid South Africa today.

Category: THE NEW WORKER | FEATURES