Extending bargaining council agreements to non-parties is being challenged in the High Court as being unconstitutional. All citizens should be allowed to seek work and earn money for food and shelter. Will the ANC and COSATU dare to defend the scheme concocted for purely political gain by Prime Minister JC Smuts in 1924 ?
Jurists generally think collusion should be illegal, which is why it attracts extreme penalties in SA. Except in labour law, which is truly bizarre. Collusion is not only allowed, it’s mandatory and collusive deals are imposed on noncolluders. A and B negotiate contracts that bind C and D, where C includes small mostly black business and D includes marginal workers and desperate job-seekers.
The Free Market Foundation’s director Leon Louw asks the question Who would oppose reforms to labour law? The column was first published in Business Day today.
Extracts
. . . .
A most passionate critic of labour law is Herman Mashaba. “Decent people can’t stand by and do nothing when 7-million people are unemployed, half our youth have never worked, and black small business has been decimated. I’m no economist or lawyer but common sense tells you we must reform our labour law.”
Mashaba may not be an economist, but we know from the immutable law of opportunity cost that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”. All benefits have costs, and if things cost more, people buy less, including labour. Economics teaches that well-intended laws often have negative effects far exceeding their real or expected benefits. As our labour laws increase the cost, risk and difficulty of employing people, fewer people are employed.
. . . .
Under Mashaba’s heroic leadership, the Free Market Foundation launched a constitutional challenge against the law on Tuesday. Who would oppose such a move? Presumably not employers who want freedom to negotiate terms of employment and dismissal. Presumably not unions whose size and power will soar if 7-million potential members get jobs with rising incomes thanks to competition for labour. Presumably not the government because it is the worst victim of labour law, having faced more demands, lost hours and labour-related unrest than it ever did under anti-apartheid mass action. Presumably not the nongovernmenal organisations that care about the poorest of the poor.
So will the case go unopposed? Of course not. There will be government, union and do-gooder opposition compelled by myth and circumstance to protect workers from “exploitation”. Left of centre economist Joan Robinson reputedly said minimum wages protect workers from exploitation by throwing them out of work. African-American economist Thomas Sowell said all minimum-wage laws fix the minimum at zero because they condemn the unemployed to zero income. Eustace Davie’s practical compromise is to allow the unemployed to choose between earning something and nothing.
Surely our common goal should be to allow people to work and earn money to put food in their bellies and a roof over their heads.
For whom the bell tolls
Meaning
A quotation from a work by John Donne, in which he explores the interconnectedness of humanity – see below.
Origin
John Donne (1572-1631), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII: Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris:
“Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.
…
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Donne lived in Tudor and Stewart England, and at that time the tolling of church bells to mark various events was an important feature of daily life. The tolling referred to in the quotation is, of course, that of funeral bells. Donne’s view, which has, oddly for a 17th century Christian, much in common with 21st century eastern religions, was that all people are socially and spiritually interconnected; for example, the contemporary Buddhist view is demonstrated by the reply given by the Dalai Lama, when asked during a visit to Northern Ireland how the warring Protestants and Catholics could co-exist: “Remember we are all one – all the same”. Donne seems to be saying that whatever affects one affects us all. This is highlighted by the famous ‘no man is an island’ line at the beginning of the ‘for whom the bells tolls’ paragraph.
Donne’s Meditations concern man’s spiritual and social functioning, especially with regard to illness and death. They are somewhat mystical and difficult to interpret, especially without the benefit of experience of the nuances of the social and religious sensibilities of a 17th century Englishman. It is a testament to Donne’s insight that the work contains much that strikes deep chords with people living and dying today.
There’s some debate about what precisely what was meant. Some think that Donne was simply pointing out people’s mortality and that when a funeral bell was heard it was a reminder that we are nearer death each day, i.e. the bell is tolling for us. Others view it more mystically and argue that Donne is saying we are all one and that, when one dies, we all die a little. This isn’t as bleak as it might sound, as the counterpoint would be that there is some part of the living in the dead and that we continue a form of life after death.
Ernest Hemingway helped to make the phrase commonplace in the language when he chose to use the quotation for the title of his 1940-published book about the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway refers back to ‘for whom the bells tolls’ and to ‘no man is an island’ to demonstrate and examine his feelings of solidarity with the allied groups fighting the fascists. There was a strong feeling amongst many intellectuals around the world at the time that it was a moral duty to fight fascism, which they feared may take root world-wide if not checked.