Nicolas Pons-Vignon, a senior researcher with the School of Economic & Business Sciences at Wits University, published an article earlier this year refuting the argument that employees in low-level occupational levels are overpaid. One of the major problems in South Africa for those employees is the lack of basic services that should be provided by the government, such as transport. It is asserted correctly that it is expensive to be poor in South Africa and that transport costs routinely account for a third or more of spending by employees. ‘This is largely related to the cost of getting to work and back in a country where employment and dwelling are typically very distant, and public transport still poorly developed’.
Read Are SA workers paid too much? originally published on the South African Civil Society Information Service’s website and reported in the Rand Daily Mail on 23 January 2015.
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The experiences of workers have been extremely varied since the early 1990s. While the standard employment relationship has enjoyed greater protection than in the past — though academic research shows that this protection is not greater than in other countries — and a number of workers in permanent employment have enjoyed rising income thanks to collective bargaining, many other workers have experienced rapid casualisation. Labour lawyer Jan Theron argues that the latter are remarkably unprotected, whether by the state or unions.
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A quick look at employment relations in Germany, whose productive (and protected) workers, often cited as examples should suffice to illustrate the point. German employers consider it absolutely normal that they have to provide a valid reason for laying off a worker. Here in South Africa, this basic requirement of labour law is resented with remarkable force and seems to be at the heart of the drive to draw on labour brokers who can dispose of workers at will. Would the forestry manager not feel it absolutely unfair if he were given the sack without warning or explanation?
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The level of such a living wage closely depends on the cost of living and personal aspirations. As a comedian once put it, the aspirations of the poor are not far removed from the realities of the rich. Yet the fact that workers dare to demand substantially higher wages appears to hurt the sensitivities of many of those who earn and live well. This is because they consider that a worker’s wage should only be sufficient to cover his or her basic needs. Never mind that basic needs are not even fully covered in many cases, such as in the forestry sector, where disgruntled (or sick) workers can be promptly replaced with others.
This points to an important dimension of the question of wages in South Africa — that high levels of unemployment create a labour market where positions can be filled at almost any wage level. This doesn’t mean that those who are paid such low wages are content with them. Workers have no choice. There is little alternative to wage employment for people’s survival in South Africa. To make matters worse, jobs are scarce.
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The great level of flexibility (or insecurity, depending on one’s perspective) of the labour market and declining wage incomes for many of the employed have hit poor households hard. Documenting how Sowetans experience class identity, sociologist Claire Ceruti shows that households are bound by a feeling of vulnerability vis-à-vis the labour market. This is a reminder, which is conveniently ignored by those who pitch workers against the poor. Those who are employed typically support all household members, including the unemployed. But their status can easily change given that available employment is frequently casual. This contradicts the idea that the employed and the unemployed are enemies, as people switch between both states on a regular basis.