An injury to all

The power of the unions to extract excessive rents from taxpayers by way of salary increases, as in the recent gouging by the public servants’ unions and those engaged with Eskom, must be curbed. The tail is wagging the dog!

One could understand the attitude of the unions in the past, when they were a bastion against exploitation by white-dominated businesses and government, but that is long past. The fact is that now the unions, with a minority membership within the employed, are using their power to increase the prosperity of members across economic activity and exclude nonmembers from reasonable employment.

A decent wage for all is an admirable objective in a productive, First World economy; here it applies only to the unionised while the rest must sell trinkets or beg on street corners. With less spent and wasted on comfortable, entrenched government and state-owned company administrators, more could be spent on the largely failed health service.

The gross excesses paid to directors of public companies must be reined in and all their income taxed, including capital profit from share allocations in whatever form. In all public companies employees at all levels should receive shares as part of their income, not only directors and upper management. Unions should be represented on boards.

Our system should be altered to include a portion of direct constituency representation at national level, as in municipal elections, with a system that provides for representation of minority parties (subject to a hurdle level of votes). When politicians know they can be elected or removed, they will attend more closely to the needs of the electorate and less to outdated political theories. The president should be elected by direct vote.

Robert Stone Linden