LABOR ORGANIZATION IN WESTERN CAPE AGRICULTURE - AN ETHNIC CORPORATISM

This study examines labour organisation in South Africa's fruit and wi ne industries. It is argued that the economic and political pressures emanating from the sectors' insertion in export markets is the main re ason behind the transformation of the labour regime from a low-wage pa ternalism to a variety of arrangements, including neo-paternalism, for mal collective bargaining and corporatist equity-sharing and decision making. While the first cannot hold, it is not clear which of the latt er two regimes is set to become the dominant future pattern. That, it would seem, depends mainly on the responses of white farmers to growin g worker demand for the sharing of economic and political power.