Judging by the number of articles, editorials and reports no time should be lost in getting to grips with the problem of ensuring that citizens have every opportunity to earn a living. It is too much to expect citizens to create jobs when the ‘hassle’ factor is so great. We are all going to have to find ways of fending for ourselves. This is already happening if one considers the growth in the old-style ‘markets’ that are springing up over weekends.
Links to numerous posts on BDLive during the last 3 months
Minimum wage ‘hurt’ farm workers by Carol Paton on 23/7/2015
FARMERS responded to the hefty increase in the minimum wage in 2013 by reducing permanent employment, cutting working hours, moving workers off farms and charging fees for non-wage benefits such as housing, a large study commissioned by the International Labour Organisation on the living and working conditions of farm workers has found. The findings come ahead of plans by the state to introduce a minimum wage across the board, amid fears from some quarters about the negative effect such a move will have on employment. The minimum wage for farm workers rose 52% in March 2013 after a series of violent strikes. The report finds most farmers comply with minimum wage legislation and basic rights for workers and have rather found other ways to cut labour costs. Increased labour costs are only a part of the crisis affecting farms, the report reads.
Report finds that land reform is hurting workers by Juliette Saunders on 22/7/2015
Having to comply with laws such as land tenure for workers had eroded farmers’ profits and many workers were now hired on a casual basis, with fewer living on farm property and instead moving to informal settlements in nearby towns. This placed a burden on cash-strapped small municipalities to provide state-subsidised housing and services such as water and electricity. The report also looked at farm wages and working conditions during the third quarter of 2014. It found that 51.1% of workers had permanent employment‚ 25.2% had employment of limited duration‚ and 23.6% had employment of unspecified duration.
Shortage of jobs creating a new apartheid by Greg Mills and Jeffrey Herbst on 15/7/2015
The key problem is high unemployment, which threatens to be the new apartheid, in which life chances are determined by access to jobs. Between 1994 and last year, the number of employed almost doubled to 15.1-million. Yet the number of unemployed (as defined broadly) increased even faster, from 3.7-million to 8.3-million. As a result, unemployment, using the expanded definition, has risen from 31.5% in 1994 to almost 36% 20 years later, and to nearly 70% among South Africans younger than 35 years.
Crisis demands we ditch our aversion to lowly paid jobs by Ann Bernstein on 30/6/2015
IT IS time SA had a realistic jobs strategy with the potential to create millions of new jobs for the workforce we actually have. The roots of SA’s overlapping economic, social and political crises can be found in the failure of our economy to create jobs. It is time to stop the wishful thinking and grand but empty promises. SA needs to make some bold new choices and change course. By some measures, SA’s unemployment crisis is the deepest in the world: in a country of about 30-million working-age adults, about 7.3-million people are unemployed.
National minimum wage for SA belongs in cloud cuckoo land by John Kane-Berman on 29/6/2015
IN SEPTEMBER 2013, Cyril Ramaphosa said at Wits University that starting wages in SA were higher than the relative productivity of new workers, so companies incurred a “loss” when hiring inexperienced workers. New entrants to the labour market were effectively locked out. “This system,” he said, “denies our children and future generations the opportunity to work, to learn, to gain experience and to become full citizens in their own right.” Could this be the same Ramaphosa, now deputy president of both the country and the African National Congress (ANC), who now says there is broad acceptance of the need to introduce a national minimum wage? That anyone should be contemplating the imposition of a national minimum wage at this point in our economic development is an indication of how far those who are ruling this country and their allies in various quarters have journeyed into cloud cuckoo land.
Rethink job legislation, says G-20 subgroup by Ntsakisi Maswanganyi on 18/6/2015
GOVERNMENTS should end regulatory inconsistencies that often hamper job-creation efforts, businesses in the Group of 20 (G-20) rich and developing nations said on Wednesday. South Africa is a G-20 member. Representatives from the Business 20, B-20 as the business grouping is known, met in Bodrum, Turkey, to thrash out preliminary recommendations they will present to G-20 leaders this year. Small businesses, in particular, were struggling to keep up with “ever-changing regulations”, B-20 content manager Damla Calgar said.
SA is creating jobs that lock out workers forever by Gavin Keeton on 8/6/2015
If we want to reduce our frighteningly high levels of unemployment, we must accomplish three things. First, the economy must grow much faster. Second, education needs to improve dramatically to enable a much larger proportion of especially black South Africans to enter the labour market with qualifications that substantially improve their chances of finding a job. Finally, we need to create jobs for the millions of unemployed people and the hundreds of thousands of new entrants into the labour market who do not have a matric. These workers can acquire new skills only by finding work and acquiring on-the-job training.
Jobs should be an obsession: EDITORIAL on 28/5/2015
And the most striking figure is not the unemployment rate itself but the absorption rate, which at 43% is extremely low even by developing country standards. What it tells us, in effect, is that fewer than half of all adult South Africans actually work. The rest are unemployed (an extraordinary 8.7-million), have given up looking for work, or aren’t even trying because they are students or housewives.
A struggle for youth employment by Fred Turok on 6/5/2015
YOUTH unemployment is a time bomb and “the greatest risk to social stability in SA”, according to the National Planning Commission’s diagnostic report released in 2011. Yet, while there has been considerable debate on the extent, nature and implications of youth unemployment, there appears to be little concerted action to address it. The economy has failed to keep up with the growth of the labour force and has not invested sufficiently in human development. Unemployment, especially among young people, continues to grow.