Business the only solution

Here we go again. The headline reads “Workers trapped in a serial injustice cycle” (February 4). In the SA of today, anyone is lucky to be a worker at all. No matter who we blame for the economy, the constant harping against business is the serial injustice that really matters.

The columnist uses a story covering about 40 years during which some related employees were dismissed; one for failure to attend training sessions, and another a temporary employee retrenched (but securing another job).

The columnist mentions one employee’s father who, 16 years earlier as president of Cosatu, had called for a consumer boycott of the cereal company, thus contriving to interpret these events as some sort of family-worker vendetta, or as he states a “familial bout of déjà vu”.

When will we acknowledge that the blessing of enterprise is sadly a fragile concept, which is subject to competition and vicissitudes, and operates on sensitive marginal levels of viability? Constantly throwing stones at business is the surest way of increasing unemployment and poverty.

Gavin Barnett Somerset West