Equality moral obligation
IT IS ironic that the proposed minimum wage announced by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa came a few weeks after Shoprite CEO, Whitey Basson pocketed a “cool” R50-million bonus and when a Bloomberg report revealed that CEOs in South Africa are among the highest earners in the world relative to the average income of workers.
Depending on where you sit along the socioeconomic food chain, the announcement could be a welcome relief, an insult or a threat to jobs.
The announcement has implications at two levels. The first is political – the proposed minimum could increase government support from the lowest income worker level but unions and other interested civil society organisations may feel it is not a decent or appropriate living wage. Cosatu at some point proposed a wage of R4 500 to R5 000.
The second level is the operational or technical level. Here the biggest challenge is to enforce the wage. We all know the policy implementation challenges the country faces. Will the Department of Labour, which already faces huge challenges in rooting out many unfair labour practices, particularly against vulnerable workers, be ready to enforce these proposals once finalised?
In fact, the department is struggling to enforce equity in the workplace even at middle to senior management levels. Will they be able to inspect and monitor compliance across all the various sectors of the economy?
Technically, questions have to asked about what the proposed wage means for small business and the current sectoral determinations such as retail, domestic, agriculture and hospitality. For example, the current monthly sectoral wage in the wholesale or retail sector for a cashier who works an average of 27 to 45 hours a week is around R3 500 anyway. Therefore there is little change in this category of employees despite Shoprite’s outgoing CEO earning 14 000 times more than they do.
We should also ask ourselves if the current cashier wages are sufficient for maintaining daily living expenses, those in the consumer price basket (CPI) such as food, transport, electricity accommodation and school fees.
In 2014, the median income for workers in South Africa was estimated at R3 000 per month, the same as the median income for the African household in 2012. This means wages for the average worker have remained constant relatively speaking, despite rising food and transport costs.
So while a proposal to address the income and inequality gap is welcome, it is of concern that we make a spectacle about a wage that will not systemically address the socio-economic challenges of the poorest households and workers.
While views on the impact of minimum wages on employment and growth may be mixed, there is surely a bigger moral requirement for on the country to rise above “bottom lines” and start building a more equal society. — Khaya Tyatya, via e-mail
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