Youth, Skills Development and Employment in the Wine Industry

Peliwe LolwanaResearching education and Labour (REAL)

centreUniversity of Witwatersrand

Presentation outline

1. Introduction2. Theoretical Framework3. Youth unemployment4. Youth Development and Social Protection Policies5. The Wine Industry6. Changes or not?7. Barriers for young people in entering the wine industry8. Lessons9. Conclusion

1. Introduction

• Governments struggling with youth policy development responsibilities

• Young people finding it more difficult to enter the labour market, as compared to generations before, all over the world

• Study about policies, people and Institutions:– Policies addressing skills development and work– Young people’s social capital– Institutional and programmatic strategies to manage implementation of

policies• Questions:• What is the nature of jobs young people get? By whom and here?

What are the structural barriers• What are the policies regarding work preparation and

employment? Do they help?

2. Theoretical Framework

2.1. Where is work coming from for youth?– The precariousness of the nature of youth jobs vs the notion of decent

work– The idea of a pre-existing market condition for full employment– Decrease of permanent jobs and economic insecurity for youth– Youth lacking ‘social capital’ – skills shortage and employability of

youth– Transition pathways to work in a historically and racialized labour

market– Differentiation of ‘worlds of inclusion’ according to industries,

occupational sectors, characteristics of companies, intermediaries of employment, educational institutions, vocational training and youth segments

Theoretical Framework

2.2. What is the nature of skills and work preparation?•Contestations around the notion of skills – from manual to technical to high level expert work•Instrumentalisation of education to meet the needs of the labour market – skills as tasks•Shifting of the language on skills – from an input oriented concept to an outcome concept•The hopelessness of the education system to meet the demands of the labour market•The South African context of skills development – straddling the need for social redress and the distributive requirements of the labour market through employment

Theoretical Framework

2.3. What is the nature of social justice and work?•Country recovering from a deep social crisis that resulted in social injustices, social inequality and underdevelopment•Transformation in terms of redress is crucial for social justice and youth employment is a central component of social justice – how we carry the country forward•Social justice and social protection approaches associated with a political project or a range of social forces which agitate for it.

3. Youth employment

Youth unemployment

Youth unemployment

Youth unemployment

Youth unemployment

• More than 1 in 3 South African young people (aged 15-34 years) are unemployed

• 16.8% of young people are unemployed compared to 9,6% of adults.

• 55.7% of the unemployed youth have never worked.• 63,5% of young people in South Africa did not complete their

secondary schooling.• Young people accounted for 70,9% of the unemployed.• Close to 1 in 12 young people had given up searching for

work, accounting for 69,1% of the discouraged work-seekers in the South African labour market.

Youth unemployment

• Diagnosis of youth unemployment:– Popular view: crisis in education which in turn results in a shortage of

skills– High cost of labour – SA attracting far less foreign direct investments

and exporting less industrial outputs than many countries in the sane peer group

– A structural failure of capitalism – removal of restrictions on trade and financial transactions – increased competition in doing business and a global financial crisis making unemployment inevitable.

“ Youth are passed through schools that don’t teach, then forced to search for jobs that don’t exist, and finally left stranded in the street to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them” (Newton, 2009).

4. Youth Development and Social protection Policies

• School related policies: – School fee exemption– No-fee school policy– National Nutrition programme– Scholar Transport policy

• Child Support Grant• National Student Financial Aid Scheme• Employment Tax Incentive Act 2014• National Youth Policy

5. The Wine Industry

• Wine industry includes wine, wine for brandy, distilling wine, brandy and other spirits distilled from distilling wine, grape juice and grape juice concentrate

• Industry in SA goes as far back as the 17th century after the Napoleonic Wars to the establishment of KWV as a co-operative

• 90% of wine farmers in the Cape were members of the co-op by 1917• A significant feature of the labour market system has been the ‘dop’ system

which was institutionalised in almost 300 years• Pre-1994 era of public procurement was driven by tender boards • Deregulation –post-1994 resulted in rise of private sellers affecting about 575

private wine estates producing about 50 000 tons of grapes• South African Wine Industry Trust (SAWIT) established to transform the industry• Seasonal labour is a characteristic feature of the industry - the Marikana of

the Wine industry were the De Doorns and the Overberg region strikes in post-apartheid South Africa

The Wine Industry

• Ownership has not changed much racially- requires a lot of money Black people still do not have

• Early 1990s –upward growth – since 2000s tough times – costs going up – international competition – strikes

• Employers have since left the South African Wine Industry Transformation (SAWIT) Board and the board has turned into a community Board.

6. Changes or not?

• Things that have changed:

– Twenty one years ago, barely 50% of students passed matric and now more than 75% do.

– Problem of the last 3 years of schooling still persist– The nature of post-school opportunities for young people has changed

and not easily accessible – we do not know if the numbers have /not changed yet

• Things that have not changed– Ownership of private companies– Social Capital of Black youth

7. Barriers for young people in entering the Wine Industry?

• Accessing University education - Biology, Science and Mathematics achievements and industry absorbs very few (11)

• A Western Cape specialisation with a focus in only 2 (3) HE institutions • Agriculture side is still seasonal and depend on unskilled labour and social

networks • No career path for black youth in the intermediate levels of industry

(vineyards; cellars; logistics; marketers; suppliers; contractors; chemical,etc.)

• Language, in particular the use of Afrikaans as well as the language of wine

• Ownership – from Co-ops to ‘hobby’ owners and now re-organising -family dominated business – takes a lot of sending a young person to someone’s home

Barriers for young people in entering the Wine Industry?

• Transport – accessing farms is not easy without own car• An industry under siege – internal transformation demands to

international competition• Rethinking of how skils are developed in this industry - Low levels of

education and skills in general – limiting even the options for mechanisation as well as career pathing

• A male –dominated field• Except for Stellenbosch University and Elsenberg College, post-school

training has not been integrated in other institutions. SAWIT has about 500 learners in a public TVET college doing learnerships – but where will they go after?

• Pinotage Youth Development Academy – an interesting approach in training and partnerships

8. Lessons from this study

7.1. The skills development system•Human Capital Theory and the transformation agenda•Success in Basic Education and pro-poor policies in the schooling system•Reduction of post-school options – teachers’ colleges and the long transforming TVET system•The National Qualifications Framework as a distraction and a different kind of integration•The Skills Development Strategy and the replacement of apprenticeships with learnerships and back again•The impact of the transformation on a fragile and weak system•SETAs and their sectoral interventions in skills development

• Post-school efforts still arbitrary whilst the nature of the skills in the wine industry is changing at a rapid pace

• Skills development in the wine Industry is a responsibility of two SETAs – Agriculture and FoodBev

Lessons

The policy produces difficulties when there are more ‘entitled’ young people than there are employers willing to employ and train them. The gap can lead to the emergence of a sub-group of apprentices who do not have employed status and are consequently more vulnerable to the sorts of outcomes (e.g. moving around state-sponsored placements) associated with the youth training schemes (Unwin, 2012, p.9).

Lessons

7.2. Employment•Where is work coming from? Structural changes have been felt in many large industries in SA (e.g. Wine) and no study of how these changes impact on jobs and the labour market•Skills and work Preparation: Unlike their Germanic and Swiss counterparts, SA employers have never seen skills development as an investment, but as a cost. Transformation efforts provide an excuse for employers to distance themselves•Social protection policies, education and work: An unequal society requires a distribution of both education and work opportunities. Access to opportunity is a tool for social mobility. Lack of coherence in our social protection and social justice policies further perpetuates disadvantage.

8. Conclusion

• Educational achievements have improved, but a large number of young people still leave school with an inadequate level of foundational education on which to build skills for the 21st century economy

• Our skills development system is very small, fragmented and almost divorced from the industries

• The skills system is not easily accessible – spatially and financially (TVET and SETAS) – expectations are low and huge contestations around spending collected levy funds resulting in unspent monies

Conclusion

• A serious strategy of getting large numbers of people into the labour market is still lacking in the country

• An underestimation of the lack of social capital that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds have

• A double problem in industries of being shaken by the transformation efforts and reluctance to invest in training

• An effective skills system is not an administrative function but a brokering of partnerships and collaboration

• We need a major disruption in the system and persue a different strategy to get multitudes of young people in the labour market