Response to Helen Zille's statement on Cosatu
By the mere fact that the labour market in South Africa is characterised by a large number of unemployed workers ready to accept any job in almost any condition at any rate per hour, with casualisation of the workers on the increase, outsourcing and the use of labour brokers so widespread, permanent jobs with benefits having become an exception rather than the rule and the growing number of working poor unable to sustain themselves from the meagre salaries they earn, these are none other than indicative signs of the degree of exploitative flexibility in our labour market.
Cosatu is fighting to reverse this seemingly becoming popular trend and standard practice by employers/would be employers in this country.
The illusion that structural problems of unemployment shall be remedied by waving a magic wand supposed to deregulate the labour market is neither borne by historical facts nor corroborated by contemporary experience. It is about time profit-mongers like Ms Zille learn that the world of information technology don¹t thrive through sheltered markets guaranteeing endless reservoir of cheap labour but survive on continuous innovation beyond the range of familiar beacon.
Cosatu will not support any programme of national youth wage subsidy whose aim is to aid dwindling profitability levels of ailing enterprises under the cloak of saving jobs or avoiding retrenchments, instead resources earmarked for such purpose should be redirected towards public employment creation or at least a direct payment be made to intended beneficiaries rather than use scarce fiscal resources to bailout irresponsible and wasteful enterprises.
We don't believe in mantra, panaceas and statements of faith about wage subsidies. In fact wage subsidies had been implemented in the developing world with varying degrees of successes and failures depending on purpose, aim, implementing agents size of subsidy etc. In a number of cases wherein they had been implemented wage subsidies tended to provide temporary relief to unemployment which is what we seek not for the wretched millions of underemployed and unemployed in this country.
It would be worthwhile for politicians to spare the nation the rhetorical gospel of wage subsidy and explore feasible avenues of creating employment through the opportunity offered by green technology and green industries the least. For the record it is not the cost of labour, not organisations of labour and certainly neither low labour productivity nor inadequate skills of the workforce that cause unemployment but the set up of our industrial structure, foreign ownership of national resources and archaic attitudes embedded in the nostalgia of the past.
Statement issued by Patrick Phelane, Labour Market Policy Co-ordinator, Congress of South African Trade Unions, November 13 2010
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