Anybody here know of a forum/blog on labor issues for small business owners? Big companies can afford the lawyers but the small guy is standing alone against the unions.
Thanks. Seems like the site I need.
The unions seem to be messing up things for a huge number of South Africans. Not just employers or potential employers, but also the unemployed.
Not quite sure what you mean here by “messing up things.” Their typical wage/increase demands and readiness to strike en masse at the drop of a hat are placing considerable strain on the country’s economy.
The real problem is that with the emergence of collective bargaining in the early 80s during the country’s darkest political hours, trade unions were actually political tools much more than genuine labour organisations. The idea was to exert political pressure via economic pressure. Unfortunately, nobody told the trade unions that they should turn it down after 1994, and they still seem to think of themselves in political terms. Just listen to the words Vavi uses when he speaks. You’d swear he was a politician, albeit a radical one.
The other aspect that heightens tensions between labour and industry are the unfilled (and unrealistic!) expectations that the ANC and other political parties have engendered in the populace through promises the fulfilment of which have repeatedly been thwarted and deferred. The wage gap remains as wide as it ever was, something that is not unusual for a developing economy. The unions seem unwilling or unable to factor this dichotomy between a third-world economy and first-world ambitions into their labour agendas.
Moreover, SA has roaring unemployment, about 15 million people (and rising) receiving social grants and a tax base of under six million that’s hardly grown, which is perhaps a greater threat to economic stability than all of the unions combined. This arrangement is not sustainable indefinitely. What’s worse, SASSA measures its success primarily by how much money it can dole out annually — the more, the better. The national indebtedness has also risen sharply in the last five years owing to ever more readily available credit.
'Luthon64