For business, the problem is to achieve an adequate return on capital in a hostile environment and to abandon profitless ventures. There may be tactical reasons to bow to political pressure, but there is no strategic reason to do so. This world, and this continent, offer limitless opportunities where government does not try to appropriate all the profit and workers do not regard their employers as bitter enemies.
Ken Owen’s letter Management to blame was first published in Business Day last week in response to Tim Cohen (Not much logic to South Africa’s penchant for wildcat strikes, The Bottom Line, February 25) and a few comments are offered.
- First, labour productivity is not usually increased by making workers work harder or longer hours. That is why French workers are more productive than US workers despite the notorious 35-hour week. (Yes, it is true, as the Financial Times has recently admitted). Productivity depends absolutely on wise investment and sound management. Sensibly managed, a diminishing work force should result in higher productivity.
- Second, economic advance is essentially achieved by the destruction of successive layers of technology and their replacement by higher levels. The child’s guide example is replacing the man with a shovel with a mechanical loader. For the mines it means more mechanisation and the total elimination of unskilled labourers, whether by training or redundancy.
- Third, all mines reach the end of their lives, and it is better to shut them down progressively by closing off unprofitable sections than suddenly to announce that 14,000 workers have become surplus. Every strike is an opportunity to shut down unprofitable operations, to reduce the work force, and raise productivity.
Taken together, these points imply SA’s problem lies with management, not with labour law or trades unions. The law was promoted by naively idealistic lawyers who have since had second thoughts, and passed by Tito Mboweni and the African National Congress in defiance of all sensible advice at the time. There is no compulsion on business to repair the law.
For business, the problem is to achieve an adequate return on capital in a hostile environment and to abandon profitless ventures. There may be tactical reasons to bow to political pressure, but there is no strategic reason to do so. This world, and this continent, offer limitless opportunities where government does not try to appropriate all the profit and workers do not regard their employers as bitter enemies.
When this logic asserts itself, as it surely will, political change will come. Even the labour law will change if employers stop trying to temper the wind to the shorn lamb.
Meanwhile, never stop smiling.
God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb
Here ‘tempers’ means ‘softens, makes less severe’, and ‘shorn’ means ‘with its wool cut off’. The proverb means that God treats the weak with greater kindness than he shows to those better able to look after themselves. In his A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, Laurence Sterne tells of his second meeting with Maria, a girl who had lost her reason. Since last they had met had travelled much – alone across the Apennines, over all Lombardy without shoes. ‘How she had borne it, and how she had got supported, she could not tell, but, “God tempers the wind ”, said Maria, “to the shorn lamb”.