Publications
Partners
This year promises turbulence nationally and globally as the political and economic environments remain volatile.
We, along with citizens of other countries, will also almost certainly be inundated with calls to patriotism and to pull together in the cause of a better life for all.
The question – as always – will be who should unite with whom and to what end?
To make such decisions, we should all critically scrutinise what are likely to be a welter of claims and promises over the next few months, especially with a general election looming on the domestic front.
Take the loudly trumpeted announcement about the R20 an hour minimum wage that was formally introduced on January 1.
As City Press pointed out last week, this was promptly undermined by an exemption that allows companies making less than 6% of profit not to pay this amount.
Read: Large part of SA economy exempted from minimum wage thanks to loophole
In the hype about the minimum wage, what also tended to remain unsaid was that this would probably apply only to a minority of low-paid workers.
Above all, this will not equate to the previously much mooted R3 500 a month for most.
Yet, only nine months ago, official circles continued to talk about a R3 500 minimum wage pay packet.
The stress now on an hourly rate seems acknowledgement that most of the lowest paid among the working poor do not have full-time work.
In any event, farm workers and that great army – mainly women – in domestic employ are not included.
Later this year, these two groups, probably the largest single component of the working poor, may qualify for minimum hourly rates of R18 and R15, respectively.
Unless exemptions apply.
But, as I have pointed out, under existing ministerial minimum wage determinations, domestic workers in metropolitan areas should already receive R15.28 an hour.
And since when have even the existing levels been adequately policed?
The labour movement has always maintained that a minimum wage be a living wage – a guaranteed income that should assure the basic necessities of life.
In the five years since unions at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) tabled R4 500 a month as a bare minimum, that minimal level of buying power has been severely eroded.
However, it is true that the establishment of a minimum wage is a step away from the vicious free-for-all supported by the free marketeers and most bosses at Nedlac.
It is equally true that, if the minimum wage is set at a grossly inadequate level, it merely entrenches poverty.
However, the debate about pay and poverty was quickly overtaken by the annual matric results hype – this time peppered with confusion about 30% pass rates.
The 30% applies only to those pupils who cannot go on to tertiary education; it merely acknowledges that these are pupils who have passed matric – they are immediate entrants into a rapidly shrinking job market.
All the warranted fanfare about 80%-plus pass rates also tended to obscure two facts: in the first place, that another several hundred thousand individuals were now seeking jobs; and, secondly, that as many of their compatriots who had started school with them 12 years ago had already joined the ranks of the massive army of jobless youngsters.
This paints a gloomy picture.
If we are ever to claw our way towards a better life for all, we need first to recognise, and deal with, the reality that lies behind the often rosy rhetoric of self-styled leaders.
Working people are central to this and should bear in mind the words of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ye are many, they are few…”
