National minimum wage debate
- Published on 5 Feb 2015
- HR Pulse News Desk
Labour federation Cosatu’s provincial secretary, Dumisani Dakile expressed how the Gauteng branch wanted the national minimum wage to be set at R7,000. Dumisani added that exemptions should be the “last resort” for companies which could not afford to pay a national minimum wage.
On the other hand, Dennis Dykes, chief economist at Nedbank, said a minimum wage would exclude a lot of people from the job market and was not the right step in the fight against unemployment. He also asked whether a national minimum wage would exclude certain job categories, like domestic workers. Last year in a presentation, Cosatu researcher Neil Coleman said technical advice would have to be sought on how farm and domestic workers would be affected by a minimum wage. Minimum wages in some sectors are already set by sectoral determinations, while the national minimum wage is currently being investigated by the government.
The parliamentary hearings, which are being held across the country, were mostly attended by individuals who gave input on what they would like the minimum wage to be. While unions are in support of a national minimum wage, they were clear it had to be part of a comprehensive social security system. Cosatu wants the government to include comprehensive social protection to provide workers with a non-wage income – including health and education provisions.
It also doesn’t want the national minimum wage to replace collective bargaining, which it believes will lead to the demobilisation of workers and the minimum wage becoming a maximum wage. Meanwhile, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) said that the national minimum wage was part of a “fundamental restructuring” of the economy.
