Gertruida is back: South African fruit picker takes on might of Tesco

Friday 29 June 2007: South African fruit picker Gertruida Baartman will today confront Tesco bosses about the poverty pay and terrible conditions on many of the farms supplying their stores.

It’s good that Labour Start covers the entire globe.

Tesco chairman David Reid promised Gertruida that she would not be targeted for her courage and that Tesco would look into its social and environmental auditing procedures in South Africa.

Since then Gertruida has been sacked. Only the intervention of the South African Women’s Group Women on Farms and the union Sikhula Sonke ensured that she got her job back. She continues to be targeted in her personal life.

Oh Tesco. But this is why we as people have to become global citizens because corporations and capital have become global forcing us to focus locally and worry about ourselves. We should be concerned about what is happening to women in South Africa working for poverty level wages supplying corporations like Tesco. Instead I think we tend to view many of the low wage outsourced and offshored workers as the enemies who are stealing US jobs. But they’re not. It’s the corporations. It’s capital that is seeking the lowest bidder. Standing up for Gertruida is standing up for us all. Standing up for labor rights in China is standing up for us all. Why else is the American Chamber of Commerce so up in arms about China enacting some sort of labor protections? We need to level the playing field and part of it is a global union movement.

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