Two significant legislative changes in South Africa promise to enhance workers' wages and combat poverty and inequality, as COSATU celebrates the progress made in this ongoing struggle.
Image: Freepik
Two recent important legislative developments have taken place in South Africa that will play important roles in raising workers’ wages, putting money in their pockets and helping to reduce our shameful levels of poverty and inequality.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has been heartened to see our efforts begin to shift the needle in this struggle.
It is important to remember the damage done to South Africa by centuries of institutional discrimination and disempowerment, particularly in wages.
It was not an accident that Black, Coloured and Indian or female workers were paid a fraction of their White or male counterparts, even when doing the same work. Confining Black workers to poorly paid jobs was a cornerstone of apartheid.
While we have made great strides since 1994 under successive African National Congress led governments, we dare not be naïve to think our racially scarred wage inequalities have disappeared.
In the public sector, we have largely overcome these inequalities, but in the private sector it is a very different story.
Employment equity reports indicating that 60% of senior management posts in the private sector are held by white males, despite constituting 4% of society, confirms we still have far to go.
Key culprits in wage inequality include the mining, banking, finance, insurance and retail sectors where it may take a decade for the lowest paid workers to earn what their CEOs make in a week!
We dare never normalise our status as the world’s most unequal society. It must continue to conscientise and mobilise all of us; government, business or labour, to do more to tackle this ticking time bomb.
Recently President Cyril Ramaphosa, a founding General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), signed into law critical provisions of the Companies Amendment Act. This is the culmination of years of struggles by Cosatu and its Affiliate, the Southern African Clothing and Textiles Workers’ Union (SACTWU) working closely with the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) at Nedlac and Parliament.
These progressive provisions of the Companies Amendment Act compel companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and state-owned enterprises to disclose in their annual reports and to their shareholders the wage gap between their highest and lowest paid employees, and in particular their actual packages.
These companies are required to table their remuneration policies to their shareholders for approval. These simple but profound legislative requirements are key to tackling our obscene wage gaps.
Further provisions of the Amendment Act awaiting Presidential promulgation require these companies to disclose their financial reports to their unions and employees.
This will empower them to understand their companies’ financial statuses, boost wage negotiations and labour market stability.
These provisions will enable shareholders to play a greater oversight role over the companies where their monies are invested, in particular workers’ pension funds.
It will be especially important for the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), the largest investment fund with assets exceeding R3.5 billion, overwhelmingly workers’ pension and insurance funds, to play a far more assertive role in nudging companies where it is invested to the right thing and take action to reduce the shameful wage gap between managers and workers.
The second important legislative development has been the Employment Equity Amendment Bill, a Private Member’s Bill, currently before Parliament.
This progressive Bill tabled by a Member of Parliament, Ms. N. Hlazo-Webster, seeks to provide further impetus in the struggle for fair pay.
It provides simple but critical amendments to the Act. It hopes to break the back of discriminatory wage practices often based upon one’s race, gender or disability and to push employers in the private sector to a more transparent and fair wage regime.
The Bill obliges employers to disclose the total costs of employment for positions when advertising them. This will empower workers to know what the jobs pay and not simply be forced to accept whatever low wage is offered. This will ease the pressure on workers desperate for a job to simply accept whatever meagre offer is made to them.
Whilst some private sector employers will object to this, the public sector and even many private sector employers have long embraced this common sense practice. It builds a culture of transparency, helps prevent unfair wage practices and guides people to apply for jobs whose requirements they meet.
The Bill similarly empowers prospective employees to request the salary packages that those positions offer from the employers. Again, this helps to build a culture of trust between the two parties.
Workers are empowered to discuss their wages with fellow employees without fear of victimisation that many private sector companies have shrouded such simple discussions in.
It will help build a sense of collective unity amongst workers and provide a powerful disincentive against discriminatory wage practices.
Employers will be prohibited from compelling prospective employees to disclose their previous wage packages.
This is key to avoid confining workers to low, unfair and discriminatory wage packages from one job to the next.
Wage remuneration should be based upon a well thought through and collectively engaged upon remuneration policy and not simply very discriminatory wages dispensed at the whim of an employer.
Paying workers a fair and ideally a living wage, and equal pay for equal work is critical to building a more just society and to tackling our toxic levels of inequality and even poverty.
Workers who feel their worth is recognised and are paid a fair wage will be more motivated and productive and thus boost workplace productivity and economic growth.
Workers who earn a decent wage will have money to buy the goods that businesses produce and need to sell.
If workers are to escape the vicious cycles of poverty and indebtedness and to ensure that their children enjoy a better life, then a fair wage needs to become a reality for all.
Putting this into law through the Companies Amendment Act and we hope soon, the Employment Equity Amendment Bill, will be powerful steps forward in this struggle.
Zingiswa Losi is the President of Cosatu.
Zingiswa Losi is the president of Cosatu.
Image: Independent Newspapers
Follow Business Report on Facebook, X and on LinkedIn for the latest Business and tech news.