WIETA News - April 2005

Social Auditing - Results from WIETA’S first year

WIETA has now completed a year of social auditing, and has assessed the performance of 42 of its producer members’ sites against the WIETA code.

In this process, WIETA auditors conducted 45-minute individual interviews with around 300 employees at all skill levels, and managerial staff, as well as a number of focus group discussions. The 42 companies span the entire production supply chain for wine, consisting of 11 stand-alone vineyards, 8 estates (vineyards and cellars), 10 stand-alone cellars, 5 cellar-bottling plant combinations, 2 stand-alone bottling plants, and 1 cork producer. There was also a wine and brandy cellar, and one each of brandy and whisky distilleries. These sites employed almost 2000 people throughout the year, of whom just under half were temporary or seasonal employees.

Men dominated the labour force, being over two-thirds of the total employed at these sites, and women were much more likely to be restricted to temporary or seasonal work than men, being concentrated in the vineyards. Because of this, women do not have access to the more trained and skilled jobs in the industry, such as in the cellars, where they have no production role at all.

Looking at industrial relations, about half (20 of the 42) of the sites had collective bargaining arrangements involving regular meetings between recognized trade unions and management, and these were almost exclusively cellars, especially those that were part of the larger producer groups. A further 6 sites had trade union members, but the union was not yet recognized by management, and its representatives were not consulted about decisions such as wages or others. The recognized trade unions that did exist were, like the industry as a whole, male-dominated.

Two thirds of the sites used labour brokers to supply their temporary or seasonal workers, and in some cases, several labour brokers were used at one site to supply labour during the harvest. WIETA auditors therefore focused particularly on whether labour standards for permanent workers were upheld for the temporary workforce at these sites. Sites that were part of the larger corporate groups were more likely to be using labour brokers than independent sites.

Overall, the results from the audits show both success stories where producers are complying well certain of the WIETA and legal standards, but also some items of the Code where labour standards were consistently low, and where much work has to be done to raise the general level of labour practices. Cellars and bottling plants fared better on average than vineyards and estates. Overall, the best performance areas of the 42 companies were the following:

The areas where standards were generally low were:

To date, six sites are WIETA - accredited. The other 36 of these audited sites are in the process of drawing up and submitting improvement plans to WIETA, based on the findings of the audits. WIETA will be working hard this year to assist these sites to reach accreditation status.

With this in mind, the WIETA strategic plan for the next three years includes researching best practice and using the findings to develop improved guidelines for the industry in consultation with all its stakeholders. The other major area of development is working with members to involve their suppliers and labour brokers in the social audit and continuous improvement processes. This will improve labour standards for the temporary and seasonal workforce during harvest and other peak times, and ensure that the growers especially are reached in larger numbers. To this end, WIETA has developed new audit methodologies for both harvest and labour broker audits.

A copy of the complete report can be downloaded HERE.

Two new programmes to assist WIETA members in achieving compliance with the code

During February, the WIETA board approved the establishment of two new programmes to complement the auditing work that we are doing in the sector. We do not have sufficient funds to implement these programmes at present, but have already submitted funding proposals to donor bodies for assistance in this regard.

The first is a training programme, which is aimed at facilitating discussion at cellars and farms and empowering the parties to contribute actively in decision making about processes that will be put in place and steps that will be taken to implement the code, in preparation for any audit process. In future, producers will be able to request WIETA to conduct training on the code at their worksites prior to the audit. The training need not necessarily be conducted per worksite, but if a number of members in a particular area are interested in the training, we will be in a position to organise a joint workshop for interested parties, which will of course reduce the cost per member.

WIETA will also be in a position to assist the parties after the audit, by providing input into and facilitating discussions between management and workers on the steps that can be taken to address areas of non-compliance.

We envisage that trained worker and management representatives will be the core of a new network which WIETA will service. This network will perform vital functions in the future including:

The second programme is a research programme, which will act as a feed-back loop to audit and training operations so that auditing and training remains a continually evolving activity based on learning, rather than a routine formal exercise, or snapshot of compliance. Thus its main role is to move WIETA away from a culture of compliance alone, to a developmental approach to labour standards.

This programme will be key to providing members with advice and practical knowledge that will help them to implement meaningful and sustainable change in their organizations, both at a technical level, and also at strategic and process levels.

The unit will attempt to bring to WIETA members as much knowledge (not simply information) on key areas of the Code where continuous improvement is required. This Unit will also inform the WIETA stakeholders so that they are able to use experiences gained in auditing to discuss new ventures in the industry with regard to ethical trade practice.

This unit will:

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