Cosatu: Spar makes headlines with significant salary increases amid calls for wage transparency

In the midst of 2025’s onslaught of fake news against South Africa and society’s addiction to negative headlines, an important announcement by Spar was missed by many.

Spar, a major South African retailer, announced a R1 million salary increase for its CEO, taking his package to over R18 million. 

Spar also increased the salary of its lowest earning employee by 40% from R107 000 to R150 000 per annum. 

What motivated these changes? 

The Companies Amendment Act initiated by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition under former Minister, Ebrahim Patel, and passed by the African National Congress led Parliament and promulgated into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2024. 

Key provisions in the Companies Amendment Act include requiring state-owned enterprises and companies listed on the stock exchange to disclose the earnings of their highest and lowest paid employees and their median average. 

They are compelled to disclose these in their annual reports to shareholders and to share their financial reports with unions and workers to empower them during wage negotiations and promote a more just and equitable labour market.

Spar’s announcements are what the amendments to the Act hoped to spur, to require companies to disclose and be transparent about the excessive packages they pay senior management and equally about how little they pay their most junior staff.

It’s intended to promote accountability to shareholders, the ultimate owners of companies, to spur their conscience and hopefully embarrassment and outrage into action.

Spar’s payment of its CEO R18 million is typical of its peers on the JSE, other large unlisted companies and SOEs. 

It is a reminder of South Africa’s stark and overwhelmingly racially skewed levels of inequalities.  

Whilst Spar’s shareholders must hold its management accountable for its excessive packages, we are pleased that these amendments provoked a sense of self-introspection and action that saw a 40% wage increase for its lowest paid employee.

That is a massive victory for that worker and their family.  

It needs to be accompanied by a salary review for all its employees to ensure a more just wage regime, one premised upon all workers earning no less than a decent living wage and one that seeks to reduce the obscene wage gap, which in this case is a shameful 169 to 1 between what the CEO earns and what its lowest paid employee is paid.

It’s equally critical for unions to ensure that Spar or other companies do not simply outsource their staff to avoid complying with their legal obligations.

We have seen similar positive efforts by other companies in response to the introduction of the National Minimum Wage Act in 2019 which commenced at R20 an hour with Woolworths not long afterwards announcing its plan to increase the minimum wage it paid its store staff to R30 and then R40 an hour. 

In 2024 Old Mutual and Sanlam announced a monthly minimum wage of R15 000 and were later followed by Investec with a R21 000 monthly minimum wage.

Whilst these are the exceptions in South Africa’s labour market, they are positive stories, spurred by the ANC led government’s legislative interventions after extensive negotiations at Nedlac with business and labour, that deserve to be applauded and emulated.

Thirty-one years into democracy, South Africa remains the world’s most unequal society.  This is a ticking time bomb that requires not only legislative nudging and red lines imposed by government but also a call to conscience and action by shareholders.

The Act focuses on SOEs and JSE listed companies as these are some of the biggest companies in South Africa with large numbers of workers and also witness to some of the most grotesque wage gaps. 

Equally they have shareholders who need to act, in the form of the state for SOEs, and private shareholders for listed companies.

Whilst South Africa is a country with a rich history of progressive activism, we have largely been passive when it comes to how workers’ hard-earned wages, their pension funds, are invested in companies, be it in SOEs through government bonds or in shares for listed companies.

The intention of the amendments requiring the wage gap to be disclosed to shareholders is to challenge them to be aware of reckless practices committed in their name and to empower them to demand better from management.  

This call needs to be embraced by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) which invests over R3.5 billion on behalf of workers in bonds, shares and property.

It needs to appreciate that these are workers’ monies and should be invested in a way that helps reduce our shameful legacies of inequality.

This is not only a moral argument against inequality but also for economic growth. 

When workers are paid better then they have more cash to take care of their families and reduce their dependence upon the state, they are able to invest in the education of their children and thus improve their own career path and earning potential, they have money to spend buying the goods businesses produce and need to sell, they provide stimulus into an economy in desperate need of growth.

Whilst we are pleased with these important steps forward, we need DTIC and the Presidency to promulgate the remaining provisions of these precedent setting amendments.  All too often Parliament passes progressive legislation only to see it take years for government to promulgate and more importantly, actively enforce their implementation.

COSATU will continue to engage Minister Parks Tau, and the Presidency on the remaining steps towards promulgation and also to begin engagements at Nedlac on the next phase of legislative reforms, in particular expanding these progressive provisions to other major companies not listed on the JSE and to set a maximum wage gap in law.

In a year when we have seen Elon Musk’s wealth leap from $400 billion to $700 billion, these kinds of progressive legislative interventions and responses by companies are the kinds of actions that humanity needs to see from governments, employers and shareholders. 

Solly Phetoe is the COSATU General Secretary.

BUSINESS REPORT