Government employees face salary cuts to help fund Eskom

[Willie Trombone]

How about they do something new like, I dunno, upgrade the grid to allow consumers to make $ from excess generation.

 

[Milano]

Too funny. Government and SOE employees have forgotten that half their jobs were invented purely as a vote-buying mechanism. Their salaries are borrowed. Now nobody is willing to pay the piper. There is a limit to how far you can kick the can down the road before you run out of road. We are at the end of that road but nobody is stepping forward to the guillotine. Time to pay the piper.

 

[Willie Trombone]

Too funny. Government and SOE employees have forgotten that half their jobs were invented purely as a vote-buying mechanism. Their salaries are borrowed. Now nobody is willing to pay the piper. There is a limit to how far you can kick the can down the road before you run out of road. We are at the end of that road but nobody is stepping forward to the guillotine. Time to pay the piper.

This. Job creation ANC style.

 

[ProfA]

nobody in government or Eskom is worth their salaries, NONE of them

Is made up bullsht all you can spew today?

 

[ProfA]

you must be one of those "the revolutionary movement can correct itself" types

it's ok, the world needs all sorts ...

Just like you are one of those "everything government is bad" types. Shame

 

[krycor]

To be fair even Eskom employees do not deserve that, the average Eskom employee did not capture Eskom and looted it, I think we need to show a little respect to the guys who went out of their way to make the best of a very undesirable situation, I have nothing but respect to the guys who kept our lights on under very testing times and I feel it is very unfortunate that they are lumped together with all the looters.

If there is anyone who deserve a pay cut here it is all government officials who had the power to do something about this as well as all executives and board members who enabled the looting.

Yes and no. I’ve only ever been in companies/departments/entities that are on the decline(only jobs I get ) and it’s never sustainable unless the useless folk are cut or lesser performers dropped.

Eskom’s problem is not merely skills or motivation it’s cost too. Unless cuts are made and teams rebuilt, keeping a large ineffective workforce has the same impact as having too little staff but with higher cost and in both situations you will loose competent staff.

Looters are a separate issue that needs to be addressed but this is governance issues.. and until gov stays out of business it will never be resolved. People need to go to jail.. unless that happens it will continue.

 

[TheChamp]

Yes and no. I’ve only ever been in companies/departments/entities that are on the decline(only jobs I get ) and it’s never sustainable unless the useless folk are cut or lesser performers dropped.

Eskom’s problem is not merely skills or motivation it’s cost too. Unless cuts are made and teams rebuilt, keeping a large ineffective workforce has the same impact as having too little staff but with higher cost and in both situations you will loose competent staff.

Looters are a separate issue that needs to be addressed but this is governance issues.. and until gov stays out of business it will never be resolved. People need to go to jail.. unless that happens it will continue.

Yes, I have no issue with cost cutting.

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

Yes but you are still overpaid, I base my assertion on nothing of course, you just look exactly 79% overpaid.

you're entitled to your opinion of course, find solace in the fact that not one cent of my salary is being paid by your tax

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

Is made up bullsht all you can spew today?

you talking to yourself in the mirror again and accidentally quoted my post?

 

[Botha22]

They are over paid, so a salary freeze would be fair. It will never happen except maybe when we are under IMF administration.

The guys at the top are overpaid. That is why the Director General in the article is offering up 10% of his salary, instead of tackling the problems at Eskom head-on.

 

[Craig_]

nobody in government or Eskom is worth their salaries, NONE of them

I work for a state owned enterprise. Most of my colleagues work their butts off. Yes, those at the top are probably overpaid, but you have absolutely no idea how wrong you are about the rest. I just ended my week on 13 hour and 17 hour days in order to make a deadline. Many of my colleagues have to do even longer hours. Are we top heavy in terms of salaries, probably, but that's not the fault of the man at the bottom.

And just like you had to negotiate your salary, so did I. I received a very good offer from a private company a few years ago and my current company had to top that before I agreed to stay. So don't generalize about things you know absolutely nothing about.

 

[Vrotappel]

Surprised nobody mentioned the most practical solution. Freeze salaries (no increases) for 1 or 2 years of every politician and employee of all state owned enterprises and government department including municipalities.

No privatise the SOEs.

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

I work for a state owned enterprise

Eskom? Because I specifically singled out Eskom and government, said nothing about other SOE's ...

 

[Craig_]

Eskom? Because I specifically singled out Eskom and government, said nothing about other SOE's ...

I work for a government owned company. So when you say government I would fall under that. And even in Eskom and most other SOE's you get hardworking people that keeps it going. Your generalization was moronic.

 

[BBSA]

The guys at the top are overpaid. That is why the Director General in the article is offering up 10% of his salary, instead of tackling the problems at Eskom head-on.

Our government wage bill is way to high as an percentage of our GDP.

Public sector wage bills are one of the largest drains on the national budget, accounting for nearly R550 billion – almost a third of the government’s total spend.

This is the equivalent of 14% of South Africa’s GDP, and given the terrible quality of South African public services, it appears to be money poorly spent.

Making matters worse is that public sector employees are often paid more than their private sector counterparts.

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/gove...age-bill-compared-to-the-us-uk-and-china.html

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

I work for a government owned company. So when you say government I would fall under that. And even in Eskom and most other SOE's you get hardworking people that keeps it going. Your generalization was moronic.

No government is government, not government owned.
Government is the various ministries / departments / parliament etc

"Moronic" would be to try and justify a single salary at Eskom, the company is beyond bankrupt, it should not exist at all. By default that means every single employee of Eskom is not worth their Eskom salary because Eskom should not be in a position to pay ANY salaries, it should be gone from this planet.

Some of those people may be hard workers, highly skilled and worth a lot of money in the market out there. That makes no difference to the fact that Eskom should not exist and should not be paying ANY salaries.

 

[Craig_]

No government is government, not government owned.
Government is the various ministries / departments / parliament etc

"Moronic" would be to try and justify a single salary at Eskom, the company is beyond bankrupt, it should not exist at all. By default that means every single employee of Eskom is not worth their Eskom salary because Eskom should not be in a position to pay ANY salaries, it should be gone from this planet.

Some of those people may be hard workers, highly skilled and worth a lot of money in the market out there. That makes no difference to the fact that Eskom should not exist and should not be paying ANY salaries.

You are even dumber than I gave you credit for. Your reply was in me saying your suggestion would collapse the public sector.

https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/thr...cuts-to-help-fund-eskom.1039405/post-23863027

On this you replied not one of the people in government deserves their salaries.

 

[grok]

the average Eskom employee did not capture Eskom and looted it

Probably not, but they all benefited from it.. that's mos the standard cry how every single white is responsible for apartheid even if you were anti-apartheid like Zille or born post 1994.

Also, there's a simple metric showing that Eskom is overstaffed, people per megawatt, comparing with other electricity companies should indicate how many personnel on average it takes to deliver a megawatt. Easy, non decolonized figure to show your effectiveness against your peers. LOL, what is our BEE flagship's ratio again?

 

[jambai]

Overpaid according to who? Do you know what a cleaner or secretary or admin clerk gets paid? I wouldn't say they are overpaid. I do believe however that their salaries are fair though as long as they can keep up with inflation. Freezing them, despite being a practical solution, would still hurt the average worker financially considering how expensive living costs are becoming.

But a job is better than no job when the country goes bankrupt and imf cuts half their jobs

 

[R13...]

No privatise the SOEs.

Someone still has to pay the debt these entities currently hold. I don't see too many private companies stumbling over themselves in their haste to take over Eskom's 500billion Rand debt.