Get+used+to+unflinching+labour,+Bodibe,+BDay




 * Business Day, Johannesburg, 29 July 2005**

=Get used to unflinching labour=


 * Oupa Bodibe**

THE image of striking workers holding placards with the slogans “apartheid wages” and “management got 20% and they offer us peanuts” may offer an indication of the deeper problems triggering strike action.

Workers have flexed their muscle across many sectors in the South African economy. But strikes are likely to continue as other sectors enter wage negotiations. This will probably continue the trend of manhours lost to strike action — which doubled between 2002 and last year. Underlying the media reports of economic losses, inconvenience to customers and the cut-and-thrust of wage bargaining is the question of why we are experiencing many strikes across sectors.

This year’s strike action occurs in the context of government attempting to introduce a debate on a dual labour market in which some workers should be exempt from current labour laws. This threat to the hard-won gains of workers resulted in the mobilisation of workers’ organisational base.

The work of union organisers has been made easier due to growing wage disparities between workers and management. The Labour Research Service estimates that for every R1 a worker earns, management earns R120 — hard to justify from a moral or economic basis. Even more unjustifiable are the moderate increases for workers compared with substantial increases for management.

Management responses to wage negotiations are often hardline. The message from management is often that it is protecting shareholder value — but it is doubtful that big increases for management, work stoppages and bad publicity equate to increasing shareholder value. Strikes are costly, and run counter to management’s aim of reducing costs.

The challenge may well be to subject managers to the levels of discipline and supervision they demand of staff.

We also need to ask, what is the justification for paying such disproportionately large packages to top executives?

When the media reported on the Pick ’n Pay and South African Airways strikes, an immediate objection raised was that the demanded wage increases would undermine the profitability of the companies in question. Management appears to be seen as an asset to the company, while workers are seen as a cost to be cut wherever possible.

Shareholders should demand to have the full extent of top management’s benefits explained to them, as these payments reduce profits as well as productivity. With share options and bonuses, management is able to argue that their actual salary is relatively small — this, however, has little bearing on the total package they take home.

Management justify their pay hikes on the basis of skills scarcities and their levels of responsibility. But this argument is flawed, given rising productivity and the importance of all employees to realising profits.

The strikes at SAA and Pick ’n Pay indicate that negotiating at employer level, a remnant of apartheid wage- setting mechanisms, is more likely to result in strikes than is collective bargaining. Developing collective bargaining mechanisms in these industries would hold the potential for improved relations.

Employers may in fact not have an option of continuing employer-level negotiations due to the increased levels of solidarity between union federations. The strikes in local government, SAA and Pick ’n Pay have seen a remarkable level of cohesion between affiliates of trade union federations the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the Federation of Unions of SA. The strikes may strengthen labour in the retail and aviation sectors in the long term.

There seems to be an unspoken menace when workers demand living wages — namely, that if a worker has a job then he or she should be grateful, and not complain about pay. Thus a major cog in the management media strategy has been to argue that workers are in fact well paid already. The day-to-day reality is vastly different. Often one worker supports up to five dependants, including unemployed relatives. Making ends meet — even in a low-inflation environment — has thus become more difficult. This can be seen in the Labour Force Survey, which shows that workers seem to be spending less and less.

As workers flex their muscle over pay across several sectors, it may herald the start of a broader living-wage campaign that focuses on why and how the working class can reclaim and defend its gains.


 * **Bodibe is director of the National Labour and Economic Development Institute, Naledi.**


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A74557