Very few of us are not feeling the pinch with food prices seemingly spiralling out of control - every month I pay more for less - interest rates going up, the looming threat of a petrol hike and countless other additional expenses.
We’re all battling to get to the end of the month with even R5 to spare in our bank accounts, and banks are taking advantage of this by pushing overdrafts at consumers who are already despairing at the amount of debt they have.
I’ve lost track of the number of calls and app-based offers I have had to rack up a ridiculous amount of debt.
Apparently, most consumers owe more than 75 percent of their monthly salary cheques to financial institutions.
Myself and many of my friends have started shopping smarter. Rather than making a separate trip to benefit from specials in the knock-and-drop, we plan a route that takes us past the store.
And yes, we read the knock-and-drop to find out where mince is cheapest.
For me, this harks back to my childhood, except back then petrol was not even R1 and it made sense for my mom to drive all over the West Rand in search of the specials in the paper.
Now, many of us also use the internet to find the best price for coffee, and stash that away in as much bulk as possible. We read articles telling us which outlet has the lowest food inflation in store.
Luxuries are a thing of the past.
And it’s the poor, who spend half of what they earn on food and a good deal on transport, who are hardest hit.
Read also: Poor hardest hit by SA’s food-price inflation - report
The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) makes the point that items like bread, samp, mealie meal, cooking oil and potatoes became 11 percent more expensive year-on-year in April. Electricity has gone up 22 percent on average each year since 2008.
“Nearly all the biggest price increases are on items on which workers and the poor spend a higher percentage of their incomes than the rich. It means that in real terms all those on fixed incomes are substantially poorer than a year ago.”
Wage demands
Admittedly, the union is making this point in the midst of wage negotiations across several industries. But it’s understandable why it’s doing that; apart from the obvious rhetoric.
The union has made several demands of the industries in which its members work, and none of these are surprising, because unions tend to beat the same drum year in and year out.
For example, when it comes to wage hikes, the union is demanding 20 percent. That’s not unusual. Neither are its demands for insourcing of outsourced work, a R5 000-per-month housing allowance and a renewed call to ban labour brokers.
What will be different about this round of talks is the pain its members face when they battle to put food on the table.
Says Numsa: “For the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, 2016 is the most important bargaining round for decades, as workers face unprecedented attacks on their standard of living and job security.
“Jobs, especially in the manufacturing sectors, are becoming more and more precarious, as retrenchments are announced almost daily; whole workplaces and even entire industries are in danger of disappearing and throwing thousands more on to the streets.
“Why we are insisting on real increases and not just amounts that reduce the drop in income they have already suffered.”
I fear this will end badly. With rolling strikes that become violent and also cause additional harm to an economy that cannot take any more battering.
The union did not, as yet, make the point that some companies are still in a position to pay out dividends, but the profit-at-what-cost argument will be made soon.
It’s understandable that workers will see themselves as exploited so shareholders can line their pockets.
However, there is only so much give in companies’ bottom lines at the moment, and any profit - which shareholders demand - has to come through cost cutting, which inevitably leads to job cuts.
It’s the typical catch-22 situation.
And it happens with every round of wage negotiations.
This year though, for the sake of our economy and jobs, we need to find some other way of dealing with this issue, or else we’re just like the child who repeatedly runs into a brick wall and doesn’t learn that he will get hurt.
We need to find some way of giving more to workers without harming the very businesses they work for.
Anyone have any bright ideas?
* Nicola Mawson is the online editor of Business Report. Follow her on Twitter @NicolaMawson or Business Report @busrep.
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