On alleged defaming of Mr Mike Schüssler
Asked by Mr Mike Schüssler's legal representatives to do so, I wish to declare that I had no intention to defame him, through my article "Are SA's unskilled workers overpaid?" published on Politics Web on the 1st of June, 2012 (see here). Our disagreement is about economic policy and workers' wages. I feel passionately for those issues, and I apologise both in my personal capacity, as well as in my capacity as an employee of AIDC, for me being carried away in this debate and jumping into a conclusion on one important point.
Firstly, the statement made in the article that proposals in the Uasa report were "immoral" - like widening the wage gap in SA or introducing a decade of real wage decreases for starting and entry salaries - had nothing to do with Mr Schüssler's personal moral character.
Economic proposals can have a moral dimension. It was that dimension I wanted to underline. Both in my personal capacity, as well as in my capacity as an employee of AIDC, I sincerely apologise that this could be interpreted as directed to the person of Mike Schüssler or to the morality of Uasa.
Secondly, unlike several other debaters, Mr Schüssler did make a revision of the Statistics SA index series suffering from structural breaks, using another method than the SA Reserve Bank (SARB). He was not "ignorant" of the fact that the series cannot be used as it is and he did not display "bad judgement" in that matter, as I wrote. I regret both in my personal capacity, as well as in my capacity as an employee of AIDC, for not studying this more closely and have no hesitation in now retracting those statements.
The reason for me believing the contrary was the display of the structural breaks series at the start of the analysis in the spread sheet Mr Schüssler sent to me, and the end of his analysis on that spread sheet, where he finally gives an account for development of unit labour costs adjusted for inflation with an index series. It is reproduced as diagram on slide 15 in the Uasa report.
The Uasa report and the said index series say that real unit labour costs increased continuously with 16 percent from 1990 to 2011. On request from researchers, the SARB provides an index series that shows a fall in real unit labour costs with minus 10 percent over the same period (remaining stable the first ten years). The complete divergence on this point between the Uasa report and the SARB is of course absolutely crucial, but the source of it is different than what I erroneously thought.
I am sorry for whatever harm caused to Uasa and Mr Schüssler by this mistake.
Apart from my apology and retraction set out above, I firmly stand by my critique of the Uasa Employment Report.
Dick Forslund, economist and researcher at Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town
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