Government outlines laws on hiring of foreigners

[TheChamp]

If locals and foreigners are equaly skilled, trained , educated and have the same work ethics, the law makes sense.

However the reality in S.A. is that often the foreigner has more qualities to offer than the local.

What qualities? That sounds more like a preferential thing where you reality and my reality can differ. I think the quality of the cheap labour potential is very alluring.

 

[Bryn]

What a crock of shyte

To grow the economy you need employees to earn and in turn spend. Cheap labour only enriches the business owners. No use having people working 12 hours shifts and taking home R 2500 a month. That doesn't grow no economy...

Finding productive workers in SA is a nightmare and one of the main reasons that manufacturers are leaving in droves every quarter. A number of us have tried incentives and it did nothing but backfire. Paying substantially more than the market-clearing rate did nothing but cause unions to become unmanageable and demand similar raises from entire bargaining groups before ending strikes. And the strikes happen for everyone in solidarity, regardless of how well you pay workers. And the well-paid workers are just as happy to burn tires and company property. The unions work their members up into a bloodlust and convince them that they should be paid the same as an accountant, so you can't win no matter what you do. Unions see to it that you're always the enemy.

There's a reason tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs are being shed every quarter. Being based in SA is the worst. Electricity, productivity, security & theft, wages, geographical location, Customs' efficiency, unions, much lower orders from the major SA retailers, currency fluctuations etc. makes this place hell on Earth. It's a matter of time before there's virtually nothing left for manufacturing. There is a very long list of reasons to leave and basically no reasons to stay.

/rant over

 

[konfab]

We need economic growth in which our people are the primary beneficiaries.

Our people being anyone who lives in South Africa. If the guavament has a problem with this, then they should limit the foreigners coming here with proper border controls and a fair visa system. If they are here legally, the constitution demands that they are treated the same as every other citizen (which is to be discriminated against based on arbitrary lines to satisfy populist racial nationalists in government :^) ).

Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.

https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-preamble

 

[SaiyanZ]

What a crock of shyte

To grow the economy you need employees to earn and in turn spend. Cheap labour only enriches the business owners. No use having people working 12 hours shifts and taking home R 2500 a month. That doesn't grow no economy...

This would be OK if SA was separate from the rest of the world and not part of a global economy. The reason we have massive import duties on nearly everything is to protect inefficient local businesses. We also can't produce and export many things because our production and labour costs are too high.

It's why China came out from nowhere to become an economic powerhouse. They can produce and export things because of cheap labour and production costs.

 

[BBSA]

We need economic growth in which our people are the primary beneficiaries.

How are you going to achieve growth ? The only way the people benefits is if the economy grow. Economy will never grow as long as the government tells private businesses who they can and can not employ.

 

[konfab]

What a crock of shyte

To grow the economy you need employees to earn and in turn spend. Cheap labour only enriches the business owners. No use having people working 12 hours shifts and taking home R 2500 a month. That doesn't grow no economy...

100% incorrect.

Economic growth only comes from the "free" lunch that you get when individuals voluntarily do business with each other. The growth comes from the fact that the person who had nothing made a conscious choice to work for R2500. The growth comes from a business that needed some task to be done and found someone who could do it.

When the government decides to stick its d!ck into voluntary interactions between individuals, the simple result is that the small chunk of growth that gets created gets smaller. In South Africa, this is effectively 0%. Meaning the government takes so much of the "free" lunch with regulations and taxes that there isn't any value that gets created.

If anyone in this thread doesn't understand why this is the case, they should watch this brilliant lecture by Davie Roodt on how it applies to South Africa.

 

[FNfal]

Reminds me of a previous government , where we had to go to the Dept. of bantu affairs and they would give us people to hire we were unable to hire people of the street or advertise 1970s and 80s .

 

[BBSA]

What a crock of shyte

To grow the economy you need employees to earn and in turn spend. Cheap labour only enriches the business owners. No use having people working 12 hours shifts and taking home R 2500 a month. That doesn't grow no economy...

By that logic we must make the minimum wage R10 000 a month and our economy will absolutely boom

 

[konfab]

This would be OK if SA was separate from the rest of the world and not part of a global economy. The reason we have massive import duties on nearly everything is to protect inefficient local businesses. We also can't produce and export many things because our production and labour costs are too high.

It's why China came out from nowhere to become an economic powerhouse. They can produce and export things because of cheap labour and production costs.

It is because they liberalised their economy. The cheap labour and their production costs were simply the environment that they had and that the market adapted itself to them.

The wikipedia page on their economic reform reads exactly like South Africa and the trouble we are in.

During this period, Deng Xiaoping's policies continued beyond the initial reforms. Controls on private businesses and government intervention continued to decrease, and there was small-scale privatization of state enterprises which had become unviable. A notable development was the decentralization of state control, leaving local provincial leaders to experiment with ways to increase economic growth and privatize the state sector.[24] Township and village enterprises, firms nominally owned by local governments but effectively private, began to gain market share at the expense of the state sector.[25] Conservative elder opposition, led by Chen Yun, prevented many major reforms which would have damaged the interests of special interest groups in the government bureaucracy.[26] Corruption and increased inflation increased discontent, contributing to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and a conservative backlash after that event which ousted several key reformers and threatened to reverse many of Deng's reforms.[27] However, Deng stood by his reforms and in 1992, he affirmed the need to continue reforms in his southern tour.[26] He also reopened the Shanghai Stock Exchange closed by Mao 40 years earlier.

Although the economy grew quickly during this period, economic troubles in the inefficient state sector increased. Heavy losses had to be made up by state revenues and acted as a drain upon the economy.[28] Inflation became problematic in 1985, 1988 and 1992.[27] Privatizations began to accelerate after 1992, and the private sector grew as a percentage of GDP. China's government slowly expanded recognition of the private economy, first as a "complement" to the state sector (1988) and then as an "important component" (1999) of the socialist market economy.[29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform

 

[konfab]

By that logic we must make the minimum wage R10 000 a month and our economy will absolutely boom

R10 000 a month?
Why not make it R2 million a month?
Then we can all be millionaires

WAKANDA FOR EVER

 

[krycor]

I fail to see how this is different from any other country around the world?

Pretty much this.. I don’t see what the big hoohaa is unless you specifically don’t want to hire a South African and then not sure why you are here..

 

[Nicodeamus]

We need economic growth in which our people are the primary beneficiaries.

Scaring away foreign skills will benefit no one. All that this is going to do is alienate foreign workers even more and play into the Xenophobic narrative.

 

[Drifter]

I fully agree with this. I have friends with the required skills, sitting without work, but our company would appoint a foreigner at double the rate we earn.

 

[krycor]

What qualities? That sounds more like a preferential thing where you reality and my reality can differ. I think the quality of the cheap labour potential is very alluring.

So should go the way of Aus & Nzl..? Ie everyone gets paid the same more or less and unless you own the company your income level has a cap vs profession and even then it’s marginal.

Watch how people advocating for cheap income now change their mind..

 

[SaiyanZ]

I fully agree with this. I have friends with the required skills, sitting without work, but our company would appoint a foreigner at double the rate we earn.

Why would a business sabotage themselves like this?

 

[Pitbull]

Finding productive workers in SA is a nightmare and one of the main reasons that manufacturers are leaving in droves every quarter. A number of us have tried incentives and it did nothing but backfire. Paying substantially more than the market-clearing rate did nothing but cause unions to become unmanageable and demand similar raises from entire bargaining groups before ending strikes. And the strikes happen for everyone in solidarity, regardless of how well you pay workers. And the well-paid workers are just as happy to burn tires and company property. The unions work their members up into a bloodlust and convince them that they should be paid the same as an accountant, so you can't win no matter what you do. Unions see to it that you're always the enemy.

There's a reason tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs are being shed every quarter. Being based in SA is the worst. Electricity, productivity, security & theft, wages, geographical location, Customs' efficiency, unions, much lower orders from the major SA retailers, currency fluctuations etc. makes this place hell on Earth. It's a matter of time before there's virtually nothing left for manufacturing. There is a very long list of reasons to leave and basically no reasons to stay.

/rant over

I agree with you 100%.

We have a unique set of challenges here in SA, especially if it comes to work ethic. And yes, paying more doesn't mean you get the right person for the job. However, paying peanuts and seeing it as a way of creating economic growth is moronic.

For an economy to work, you need as much employment as possible, 100% would be the objective. Salaries which leaves some extra for spending which in turn supplements other markets and so it goes round and round. That is how an economy grows. The more you make, the more you expand and employ, the more disposable income people have the more growth there will be.

We're currently stuck between a rock and a hard place. Most middle income earners can barely make ends meet, thus savings are decreasing and so too expenditure. Meaning less income for other sectors and year on year decline in economical growth.

We're in a perfect storm at the moment. And it will take one hell of an effort from all involved in all sectors to stem the tide. But I don't see it happening any time soon, or in the near future at least.

 

[Pitbull]

By that logic we must make the minimum wage R10 000 a month and our economy will absolutely boom

If you want to see it as that, sure.

Forcing a minimum wage does the opposite, and has been proven time and time again. You are taking away money you could have used for expansion and will need to get less workers to do more work in order to keep up with inflation.

I never said increasing minimum wage is the answer, you came up with that gem all by yourself. I think you need a bit of study in Micro and Macro economics...

I'll give you a hint, why do the Reserve Bank drop interest rates if growth is below target?

 

[Pitbull]

R10 000 a month?
Why not make it R2 million a month?
Then we can all be millionaires

WAKANDA FOR EVER

Can't take you serious with this little gem ^^

100% incorrect.

Economic growth only comes from the "free" lunch that you get when individuals voluntarily do business with each other. The growth comes from the fact that the person who had nothing made a conscious choice to work for R2500. The growth comes from a business that needed some task to be done and found someone who could do it.

When the government decides to stick its d!ck into voluntary interactions between individuals, the simple result is that the small chunk of growth that gets created gets smaller. In South Africa, this is effectively 0%. Meaning the government takes so much of the "free" lunch with regulations and taxes that there isn't any value that gets created.

If anyone in this thread doesn't understand why this is the case, they should watch this brilliant lecture by Davie Roodt on how it applies to South Africa.

 

[Neuk_]

Finding productive workers in SA is a nightmare and one of the main reasons that manufacturers are leaving in droves every quarter. A number of us have tried incentives and it did nothing but backfire. Paying substantially more than the market-clearing rate did nothing but cause unions to become unmanageable and demand similar raises from entire bargaining groups before ending strikes. And the strikes happen for everyone in solidarity, regardless of how well you pay workers. And the well-paid workers are just as happy to burn tires and company property. The unions work their members up into a bloodlust and convince them that they should be paid the same as an accountant, so you can't win no matter what you do. Unions see to it that you're always the enemy.

There's a reason tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs are being shed every quarter. Being based in SA is the worst. Electricity, productivity, security & theft, wages, geographical location, Customs' efficiency, unions, much lower orders from the major SA retailers, currency fluctuations etc. makes this place hell on Earth. It's a matter of time before there's virtually nothing left for manufacturing. There is a very long list of reasons to leave and basically no reasons to stay.

/rant over

I couldn't have said it better myself I am not directly involved but what you have described is exactly what my girlfriend and her family go through in their manufacturing business.

 

[Azg]

I fully agree with this. I have friends with the required skills, sitting without work, but our company would appoint a foreigner at double the rate we earn.

That is strange. Why would a company pay more when they could pay half for the same skills?