Open letter to the CEO of Nature's Garden
- Robert Krause
Civil society organisations wish to express solidarity with workers at Nature's Garden
As trade unions, civil society organisations and social movements, we are disturbed at reports apartheid-style tactics by Nature’s Garden, a major supplier of frozen vegetables to the likes of PicknPay and Nandos to suppress a lawful strike and boycott campaign by its workers to stave off planned retrenchments.
Nature’s Garden (Pty) Ltd is a highly profitable enterprise whose line of frozen vegetables and potato chips are sold in PicknPay, Shoprite, Makro and Spar and also supply major restaurant chains such as Nandos, Spur, King Pie and Barcelos, among others. Still, the company is said to be planning a wave of retrenchments on the pretext of mechanisation. The workers who produce food are thus threatened with unemployment and starvation in the ruthless pursuit of maximum profit. This is especially egregious given the meagre prospects of finding work in the economic crisis resulting from COVID 19.
The workers under the banner of the General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA) have sought to save their jobs by embarking on a protected strike and a boycott campaign. The tactics employed by the company are reminiscent of the apartheid government and of the South African state during the Marikana Massacre. They have employed the services of a private security company Piquant Security that specializes in ‘civil unrest & counter strike services’ who have apparently shot at picketing workers and hurled racist invectives. There are horrific pictures of workers with bullet wounds accompanying these reports. They have also sought to abuse the legal process through a SLAPP suit to interdict a lawful and peaceful boycott on the spurious grounds of defamation. This is the same tactic employed by companies against community environmental activists in particular. Over six weeks into the strike, management are still refusing to engage workers.
We stand in solidarity with the workers and join the call for the boycott of a company that is undermining the constitutionally protected rights of workers to dignity and equality, as well as their rights to protest, fair labour practices and their ability to realise their socio-economic rights. We demand that Nature’s Garden:
- Immediately halt all violence, intimidation and racist abuse directed at workers
- Immediately suspend the use of Piquant Security
- Immediately withdraw all legal proceedings against the lawful boycott campaign
- Negotiate with GIWUSA on their demands
- Put a moratorium on retrenchments
Signed by:
- Centre for Applied Legal Studies
- Right2Protest Project
- Lawyers for Human Rights