FROM asinamali to R3 500 a month, or R20 a hour.
In a historic day for South Africa, its social partners have reached an agreement at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) on a proposed national minimum wage (NMW).
Asinamali – we have no money – was a rallying cry in the struggle against apartheid. The South African Congress of Trade Unions, the labour wing of the ANC, started a campaign in the 1950s for a minimum wage of one pound a day.
A Nedlac expert panel presented its proposals to Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday, and he said that while the proposed NMW was not a living or decent wage, it was an attempt to address inequality and problems of the working poor. Ramaphosa released the panel’s report to the public, saying the process was open to not only social partners at Nedlac, but also the public to comment on the feasibility of its recommendations.
While the proposed R3 500 has no capacity to completely lift the poorest South Africans out of poverty, it would go a long way in offering relief to 41.6 percent of workers earning below R3 000 a month.
Labour and community constituencies at Nedlac wanted the level to be set between R3 700 and R4 500, an amount the panel of experts concluded would put employers under pressure and lead to job losses.
“Clearly this (R20 per hour) is not a living wage and we need to be clear on that, we need to a lot more. But this is an attempt in dealing with unemployment, wage poverty and inequality,” Ramaphosa said he also expected ratings agencies, which are in the country to evaluate our credit standing, to find in the report an indication that effort was being made to revive the economy and create harmonious labour market conditions.
“I will be outlining the contents of this report to them. They would have received the executive summary and heard what was being said in here. We are saying we are being positive and forward-looking, and we are informing them that we have made a lot of progress on the labour instability issue and reached agreement on key issues. We have also agreed on how best we can try and prevent long strikes from having a negative impact on the economy, on workers, on businesses.”
Wits University researcher and co-ordinator of the National Minimum Wage Research Initiative, Gilad Isaacs, described the proposed NMW rate as a “good recommendation”. But, like Ramaphosa, he cautioned against unrealistic expectations.
“The national minimum wage is not a wage level that is a decent wage, or a living wage, or what a worker really needs to live a good life, and unfortunately that is not really the purpose of what a national minimum wage is. A national minimum wage is about setting a wage floor under which no worker can earn.”
The Nedlac task team looking into other issues, including labour unrest, also announced an agreement on the balloting of strikes, an initiative labour rejected despite its inclusion in the Labour Relations Act, saying it would infringe on workers’ right to strike. Unions have been granted a grace period to include strike balloting in their constitutions before the signing of the agreement.
Federation of Unions of SA general secretary Dennis George said the federation was relieved to have settled the ballot matter.
“The situation of balloting is over a deficit of trust. Why would you ask another person to verify what is happening and being done by another party? I think it is important that labour was arguing those kind of things… We think that process should not be something that creates a situation for us to have a backlog.”
Although labour had been intent on pushing for the figure it considered a “living wage” in the past 18 months as discussions unfolded, reaction to yesterday’s announcement suggested they could be amenable to the recommended level.
Cosatu’s Neil Coleman said: “We think there’s a lot of meat in the report. We won’t necessarily agree with everything in it, but at least it’s now a basis for us to engage.”