Shopsteward,+05-06,+JOBS+and+POVERTY+CAMPAIGN+Q+and+A

From: The Shopsteward (COSATU), June 2005
=Some questions about the Jobs and Poverty Campaign=


 * //Aren’t the figures on job losses exaggerated? Doesn’t make sense that South Africa has higher unemployment than other countries?//**

If you want to know whether unemployment is too high in South Africa, just look around your family and your community. We know how high unemployment is from our own experience. How many young people in your family can’t find work since they left school? How many workers in your industry have lost their jobs and how many have been employed recently?

We are wearing a small shoe and the pain is felt by those wearing a small shoe. Intellectuals will always speculate and say lots of confusing things from the luxury of the offices. They can continue the theoretical debate. We have had enough of job losses and unemployment.

The official surveys confirm that South Africa has unusually high unemployment. They measure unemployment in two ways.
 * The narrower definition counts only people who want work and are looking for it. According to this definition, unemployment is about 26%. That means about one worker in four can’t find a job.
 * The broader definition counts as unemployed people who want paying work and would take it immediately, but have given up looking for it. According to this definition, 40% of workers are unemployed. In other words, almost half of all workers don’t have a job.

COSATU uses the 40% figure because we think it better reflects the need for paid work. South Africa has higher unemployment than other countries because of apartheid. Under apartheid, most people couldn’t get assets or credit, get skills or set up businesses. They had to rely on finding jobs in the formal sector. Since the 1980s, the formal sector has stopped creating enough jobs, and unemployment has soared.


 * //Won’t strike action just stop employers from creating jobs?//**

Employers think they can raise their profits by cutting employment and investing only in a few high-profit projects. We have to make them understand that they have to do more to grow the economy and create decent work. Our only weapon is our mass action. If we don’t pile on the pressure, we will never see economic growth that benefits our people and cuts down on joblessness.

The share of workers earning under R1000 a month has remained virtually constant even in the formal sector, at about 25%. That is, even in the formal sector, one worker in four earns under R1000 a month. Even in the unions, half of our members get less than R2500 a month.

Low pay is reflected in the declining share of wages and salaries in the national income. In 1994, workers got 51% of the national income; in 2004, their share had fallen to 46%. That is an indictment for our democratic society. It demonstrates that there is no easy trade off between low pay and jobs – we have got low pay, and we’re still not getting the jobs.

Against this background we need to pause and ask the difficult question is the NDR on course? There no doubt that the democratic ANC-led government has registered progress in laying the basis for non-racial, non-sexist democratic South Africa as envisaged in the Freedom Charter. However, the task is far from over – political transformation has not been matched by substantial transformation of economic power.

Economic power is still in the hands of white monopoly capital. An aspirant and vocal black bourgeoisie has also emerged but remain numerically small and depend on white capital and the state for its survival. In economic terms, capital scored the most and has reaped massive profits at the back of large-scale retrenchments.

Capital also successfully lobbied for tight macroeconomic policy and has resisted attempts to transform the economy. Thus capital has sought to shape the direction of the NDR from its perspective in the main by limiting the economic transformation agenda.

Yet capital’s agenda did not go unchallenged. The working class has challenged the economic orthodoxy supported by white monopoly capital. It has also waged significant battles for a greater share in the profits reaped by capital in order to improve working conditions. Working class communities have also challenged commodification of basic needs.

The state on the other hand is a key site of contestation between capital and workers on the one hand and factions within the bureaucracy on the other. Until around 2000 the state pursued a conservative economic policy while at the same time pursuing a modest redistribution by providing certain basic services and transferred income to some of the poor.

At the same time it presided over a restructuring project that sought to integrate South Africa capital into the global economy through substantial and accelerated trade liberalisation. Of late the state is also attempting to pursue black economic empowerment through the sector charter process.

As we march into the second decade – the crisis of under-development, unemployment and poverty – loudly proclaim the failure of the economic trajectory based on the fallacy of free markets. The accumulation path inherited from apartheid and subjected to the chill winds of international competition is now a brake to progress to achieve the economic aims of the NDR. The NDR cannot and will not be pursued on a terrain of an apartheid economy – the time for serious transformation and a new growth path has come.

The gradual shift towards a modestly expansionary fiscal policy is a tacit acknowledgement of the limitations of macroeconomic stability forged on an unreconstructed apartheid economy.

South Africa needs a new growth path that generates employment; closes the poverty gap; meets basic needs and creates new centres of accumulation. The state must play a leading role and must marshal the resources in its power and those residing in private hands towards this end.