Two drastic steps for jobs

The article, NDP’s 6% jobless rate by 2030 impossible (October 1) shows that the common cause is that creating jobs is SA’s highest priority right now.

Two drastic steps that could be considered immediately are to suspend the minimum wage completely for all jobs (or at least for new jobs) — however desirable, it is clearly an obstacle to job creation — and to experiment by turning SA, at least temporarily, into a “hire and fire” state.

Texas in the US has regularly shown the highest employment levels because it is a

“hire and fire” state: all that is required there is to tell an employee that they are fired and that is it.

This sounds incredibly hard by many standards, but when you consider creating a new job under existing circumstances they must include a proven long-term need and the risk of poor selection (probably over 50% of new employees prove a less-than-ideal choice) and getting rid of them has created a whole time- and energy-costing industry.

Texas proves that employers will take that chance far more often if mistakes are as easily undone.

What do we have to lose? If the job won’t be created in the first place, isn’t that worse than losing a percentage of newly created jobs?

There is an important psychological issue: too many people get jobs and hold them in a mediocre way — lazy, or don’t want to learn — knowing it is a major mission to get rid of them.

If we want to improve our international competitiveness, isn’t this much more likely to happen if employees at all levels right up to the top know that they have to do their best?

Roger Briggs Edenvale