The gold miners are not alone in wanting to earn more - everyone I know has been feeling the pinch of rising food prices, electricity that costs more each month, and the overall increasing cost of living.
Yet, the simple fact is - as a country - we just cannot afford to pay out more in salaries.
The ruling party - allied to the biggest trade union in the country - has argued salaries are being hiked to a point where they are spiralling and are becoming too costly for either government or the private sector.
These were the words of KwaZulu-Natal premier Senzo Mchunu, who on Thursday warned “salaries are spiralling beyond our means”.
Mchunu noted salaries in the government sector were growing at 7 percent, while the economy was battling to hit 1.8 percent. I foresee a salary freeze in the public sector in the future.
Just yesterday, gold companies tabled a final offer. In terms of this, entry-level miners are set to earn between R12 800 and R13 200 a month by the end of the third year of the agreement. This is a huge increase on the R5 800 a month these miners currently earn, and goes a long way in redressing previous imbalances.
Other levels of workers will see their salaries gain by inflation or 6 percent, whichever is greater, for each of the three years. Inflation is currently 4.7 percent, but expected to creep out of the Reserve Bank’s 3 percent to 6 percent range in the near-term.
A recent report by BankservAfrica, its Disposable Salary Index, found South Africans’ take-home pay is growing at a slower pace than a year ago, although it is still increasing.
The index’s data, which is smoothed on a three-month moving average basis, shows the average disposable salary is growing at 1 percent above inflation.
That means, simply, less money to pay for luxuries, which I’m sure many South Africans have already foregone. But it also means less cash for essentials, like food, petrol, household expenses and extra math lessons for little one.
And that means we are heading for a period of either household austerity, or wage demands will increase regardless of whether there is an agreement in place or not.
And we simply can’t afford that, and we can’t afford not to increase salaries.
Rock and a hard place much?
What I fear is the end point we will reach if the economy remains stuck where it is, or worse, falls into a recession.
Remember the end of the 1990s, when interest rates crept up to around 25 percent? (It may have been higher, that was a long time ago.)
Homes became unaffordable and banks repossessed left, right and centre. People were retrenched because of cost cutting.
I was there, we were eating donated food and lost the house, along with several other possessions.
This generation did not fight so hard to go through an economic downturn and such heavy losses that will be the sole fault of the ANC and its anti-business policies - think tourism regulations.
So I’m chuffed the ANC has finally realised we cannot keep spending as we are, but saddened its efforts are not concertedly directed towards doing something drastic now to push the economy ahead.
Yes, there is the National Development Plan, but it’s not exactly steaming ahead.
We need a concerted effort to grow this economy (I am repeating myself) but it must start with the government making it possible for business to do its bit so there can be a much better life for all.
Simply chastising the union for asking for more at a time when its members are suffering will not fill the void we face.
* Nicola Mawson is the online editor of Business Report. Follow her on Twitter @NicolaMawson or email [email protected].
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