Vavi calls for job guarantees

[BBSA]

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=144979

Speaking at a seminar about the Indian model used for large scale job creation, Cosatu’s general secretary calls for immediate action.

Secretary general of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Zwelinzima Vavi said at a public lecture yesterday, that his organisation would consider adopting a program similar to one in India that guarantees work for masses of impoverished people.

SA's government has set the country the target of creating 5-million jobs in the decade starting this year. At an official level of 25%, the country has one of the world's highest unemployment rates. It also has over 50% youth unemployment, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a statistic which measures what percentage of people aged 15-25 are working or studying.

Speaking at a seminar about the rationale for a constitutional employment guarantee in SA, Mr Vavi said that SA needed a strategy for a "disillusioned youth". He referred to his comments last year that SA was sitting on a "ticking time bomb of poverty".

"The ticking bomb needs to be defused or we will become like Tunisia or Yemen," he said.

He followed a presentation by Professor James Manor, Emeka Anyaoku Professor of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London.

Mr Manor presented his research on India’s National Rural Employment Scheme, which provides every one of India’s rural households with a right to 100 days of employment per year. Mr Manor said India’s National Rural Employment Scheme was the largest anti-poverty programme in history. Since 2006, it had provided over two billion people with work.

"The scheme has reduced hunger, raised self-esteem, advanced women, strengthened civil society, increased the popularity of government, and introduced new mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability. Yet major problems have been encountered, notably that of fraud," he said.

Mr Manor admitted said the majority of Indians working under the scheme were paid only what was considered to be a "decent minimum wage by Indian standards". He said they had been invovled mostly in public works for the country through the scheme.

Mr Vavi highlighted that the scheme there had proved politically strong for the government. Answering a question from the floor, he said Cosatu would consider the implementation of something similar in SA.

"We would like to see this thing implemented," he said.

Can the Indian model work in South Africa?

 

[(@) (@) twister]

It might be an solution to all the strikes going on in the country - if you strike we just get another guy to work part time - lovely...

 

[Kosmik]

I don't like the sound of this at all.

Seriously, if they want to employ people how about expanding the armed services? Not dumb grunts but aid workers etc. Basic construction? Offer people the ability to build their own homes , if we supply the material. Get people to actually plant crops and eat them especially hydroponics. Help industry grow, don't have fools like Malema chasing away foreign investment.

 

[McSack]

It might be an solution to all the strikes going on in the country - if you strike we just get another guy to work part time - lovely...

I somehow doubt the big union bosses are going to be keen on anything like that

In any case there's just a totally different work ethic in SA to start with and we don't have population of close to 1.2 billion people

 

[(@) (@) twister]

I somehow doubt the big union bosses are going to be keen on anything like that

In any case there's just a totally different work ethic in SA to start with and we don't have population of close to 1.2 billion people

+1 - in India they work - here 5 guys watch how 1 guy works

 

[grok]

Can the Indian model work in South Africa?

Has anything touched by the ANC really worked?

 

[TJ99]

Since 2006, it had provided over two billion people with work.

Pretty darn impressive, considering the entire population is only 1.1 or 1.2 billion. So they provided work for everyone in the country, (even the millions that already had jobs, or are not of working age), plus 800 million foreigners?

Either these guys are absolute legends or someone is telling an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny fib here....

 

[(@) (@) twister]

Has anything touched by the ANC really worked?

SARS

 

[Ninja'd]

Can the Indian model work in South Africa?

Forget SA. She can work on me all day long

 

[DreamKing]

SARS

sars is going down.
look at their efiling system

 

[McSack]

Pretty darn impressive, considering the entire population is only 1.1 or 1.2 billion. So they provided work for everyone in the country, (even the millions that already had jobs, or are not of working age), plus 800 million foreigners?

Either these guys are absolute legends or someone is telling an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny fib here....

yeah ... chinese accounting ...wait ...this is india we're talking about ....

from another business day article on the same topic:

The Indian constitution commits the state "to make effective provision for securing the right to work". India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has over 55-million participants, and has become one of the largest poverty programmes in history .

 

[DreamKing]

if they guarantee to scrap current labour laws and ban labour unions permanently.
I guarantee everyone has a job in SA.

deal?

 

[krycor]

if they guarantee to scrap current labour laws and ban labour unions permanently.
I guarantee everyone has a job in SA.

deal?

Everything will become overpriced overnight too vs salaries. Unions suck in terms of companies working vs strikes but they do increase the basic income level. In country like South Africa where corporations feel their greed justified, for all the trouble unions bring, i wouldn't want them to disappear.

 

[McSack]

I wonder how far the industrial revolution would have progressed if unions existed back then in the way Cosatu et al carry on today

 

[Paul_S]

Will never work in South Africa where the majority of the people have a very poor work ethic (expect to be paid to do nothing).

 

[krycor]

Well poor work ethic is bad because I always feel it drags the entire team down to make up for those with it.. but you can't use that as justification for removing labour unions. Without it, we'd have child labour, poor worker health and saftey regulations etc. Basically what keeps SA from competing with the likes of places like China and India is not just expense of workers or technical capability. It's the unions and gov pushing for better basic human rights, health & safety etc. and before you happily say our unskilled labour needs to be dispensable note that in the end, the gov has to take care of these people post exploitation too(so they can't get taxed if they work for nothing but need to be provided with houses, healthcare etc).. so either way you pay for it. The problem is this, if you push to increase working conditions and wages, you need to provided better skilled employees which is where we fall off the bandwagon.

 

[DJ...]

Pretty darn impressive, considering the entire population is only 1.1 or 1.2 billion. So they provided work for everyone in the country, (even the millions that already had jobs, or are not of working age), plus 800 million foreigners?

Either these guys are absolute legends or someone is telling an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny fib here....

Since 2006, so they're counting them each time they work. The statement is ambiguous though...

 

[BacchusZA]

Paraphrasing something I read the other day, one significant reason America is the commercial powerhouse it is / has been is one little phrase - "You're fired". I forget what the legislation is called and exactly how it works, but basically an employer has the right to hire and fire at their own discretion, without the need for lengthy and expensive disciplinary processes, written warnings and the like. Obviously there need to be checks and balances to prevent abuse, but knowing on any given day that if you don't perform you can be cleaning out your desk by the end of that same day certainly encourages you to be productive and work hard. In this country we end up burdened with the incompetent, the lazy, the dishonest, and the disruptive and just cannot get rid of them, so instead of that one individual suffering by having to find a new job they're better suited to, the whole company and all its employees and clients suffer because your productivity is dragged down by not being able to easily get rid of people who aren't performing and replacing them with people who are.

But hey, I work for the least productive part of the least productive "company" in the country, given I'm in the DoD - our job is to blow **** up, not make it after all - so I'm no expert on productivity. But being able to fire some of the people in my department who just don't fit in or perform appeals even to me, never mind if we were a commercial venture.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Paraphrasing something I read the other day, one significant reason America is the commercial powerhouse it is / has been is one little phrase - "You're fired". I forget what the legislation is called and exactly how it works, but basically an employer has the right to hire and fire at their own discretion, without the need for lengthy and expensive disciplinary processes, written warnings and the like. Obviously there need to be checks and balances to prevent abuse, but knowing on any given day that if you don't perform you can be cleaning out your desk by the end of that same day certainly encourages you to be productive and work hard. In this country we end up burdened with the incompetent, the lazy, the dishonest, and the disruptive and just cannot get rid of them, so instead of that one individual suffering by having to find a new job they're better suited to, the whole company and all its employees and clients suffer because your productivity is dragged down by not being able to easily get rid of people who aren't performing and replacing them with people who are.

But hey, I work for the least productive part of the least productive "company" in the country, given I'm in the DoD - our job is to blow **** up, not make it after all - so I'm no expert on productivity. But being able to fire some of the people in my department who just don't fit in or perform appeals even to me, never mind if we were a commercial venture.

This.

 

[MickeyD]

Job guarantees can work... on condition that the unions do not insist on double digit annual increases! The cost of low-skilled labour in SA is making it impossible for business to remain profitable without either increasing prices or automating their production processes or importing cheaper products in order to reduce costs.