Solly Phetoe is General Secretary of Cosatu.
By Solly Phetoe
Cosatu and millions of workers were horrified by the DA’s proposals last week that seek to overturn every single labour right, protection and benefit that generations of South African workers struggled to achieve over many decades and that have been enshrined in law since 1994 under the ANC-led government.
In essence, the DA, which likes to portray itself as a friend of the poor and the unemployed (at least at election time) is proposing to grow the economy by imposing a wage freeze on the minimum wage that 6 million workers in the farm, domestic, cleaning, security and hospitality sectors earn.The DA believes allowing the minimum wage to be collapsed by inflation is the way to create wealth.
One would have assumed that the DA would be familiar with how economies work and focus on boosting workplace productivity -- and not pickpocketing domestic and farm workers.
Key to growing the economy, in addition to removing the network and logistics obstacles, is to boost workers’ productivity.
How do we do that? By paying workers a decent wage and allowing companies to compete on attracting workers.
The DA’s solution? Pay workers less! It is a strange universe where slashing and allowing workers’ already meagre salaries to be gutted by inflation, to sink further into debt, struggle even more to pay bills and feed their families will somehow make workers motivated to work harder!
The second (of many) flaws of the DA’s pay workers peanuts logic, is that sending workers into absolute poverty will actually have an immediate and dire effect on economic productivity.
If workers’ wages are slashed, more will struggle to afford transport to work and thus be forced to walk long distances.They will also increasingly be unable to afford food that their bodies require to function. So how will an exhausted and malnourished worker be more productive?
The third fault line of the DA’s perverse understanding of modern economics, is if workers can no longer afford food and transport under the DA’s regime, who exactly will be able to afford to buy the food, clothes, furniture and cars we produce? Surely the DA is not banking on tourists to come to Makro to buy shoes?
Who exactly will flock to our beaches, fill our restaurants and stay at our hotels, if the DA’s magic bullet to unleash the economy, is to take workers’ already stressed wages and cut them in half?
In short, the DA’s proposals to slash workers’ wages would be to choke a still fragile economy.
One would want to assume that the DA is firm believer that all should be treated equally before the law. Sadly no.
When the government tabled the Companies Amendment Bills before Parliament, requiring the CEOs of listed and state-owned companies to disclose the wage gap between the obscene salaries CEOs pay themselves and the pittances they pay their junior staff in their annual company reports, as part of pricking the conscience of these captains of industry and nudging the private sector to begin reducing our still predominant apartheid wage gap; the DA balked and said no, that would be unfair to the CEOs who deserve to be paid their exorbitant packages.
To be fair to the DA, the attempts to slash workers’ already low salaries, is not limited to domestic workers or gardeners.
The DA proudly trumpets the Responsible Spending Bill it tabled in Parliament recently that proposes to cut the salaries of cleaners, security guards, teachers, police officers and countless other public servants by 10% per annum for the next decade plus.
Under the DA’s Bill, public servants could count themselves lucky if they received a 1% increase in about 10 years.
Again, is the DA consistent? Does it take its own poisonous medicine? No, of course not.
DA MPs, MPLs and councillors have been all too happy to vote for increases for themselves. When the President of the Republic proposed below inflation increases for public representatives, the DA protested!
The DA has made a lot of noise, accompanied by rent a crowd protesters, announcing that it is not an elitist party but rather an ally of the unemployed.
Yet in a strange twist of logic, the minute an unemployed person finds a job, asks for a living wage, decent working conditions and some basic labour rights in line with international norms, and heaven forbid, decides to join a union, then the DA is offended and declares these workers who feed, clothe, educate, transport, heal and protect the nation, as the enemy of the unemployed!
To be fair to the DA, their lack of familiarity with the difficulties working class families experience, that each worker on average supports 7 relatives, most workers struggle to cope with the cost of living and are highly indebted and that while we have progressive labour laws on paper many employers simply ignore them; is understandable, given that few if any of the DA’s leaders have grown up in working class communities of townships.
For the Camps Bay dinner party circles of the DA’s leadership, poverty is an abstract concept learnt about at university and dealt with through pie charts. For this gilded party, it’s not about human beings.
While it is disappointing that these are the best solutions the DA can offer to address our painful levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality; one cannot say we are surprised.
This is the same DA whose predecessors sat meekly in the Whites-only Parliament and whose most daring solution to apartheid, was to suggest a qualified franchise allowing a few Black people who reached a certain level of wealth and education to vote. Of course, such standards were not to be applied to White people!
While we may shake our heads at how oblivious the DA is to the still deep wounds of poverty and apartheid to African, Coloured and Indian South Africans, with the most contested elections since 1994, this is no joking matter.
Workers simply cannot afford to gamble with their hard-won rights on election day.
This is precisely why Cosatu is criss-crossing workplaces and communities to mobilise workers to come out in their millions on May 29 in defence of their rights and to ensure that the only party that has stood with workers, the ANC, is returned to office.
Solly Phetoe is General Secretary of Cosatu
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