 Patel appeals for calm in job market debate CAPE TOWN — Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel yesterday appealed for greater "calmness" in the debate about labour markets, which he said was not helping create the conditions for a pact between business and labour as envisaged in the New Growth Path. The strategy provides for a pact on wages, executive salaries, productivity and skills training as a platform to achieve a higher rate of economic growth and create jobs. A national skills accord between business, labour and the government has already been signed. Mr Patel stressed that this platform had to be laid in the next two years if future growth was to happen, but this effort was being undermined by the emotions whipped up by the debate over the flexibility or otherwise of the labour market. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan antagonised the Congress of South African Trade Unions with his recent comments on the possible need for a reform of labour markets to facilitate job creation. This led to the Cabinet insisting that Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant’s department was the lead department in these matters. "The more we polarise the public debate on the labour market and the more everybody digs into their respective trenches, the less we are able to create the conditions for a partnership. It makes for great sound bites, it makes for great headlines in the newspaper on all sides, but it does not take our nation’s joint efforts to create 5-million new jobs any further," Mr Patel told members of Parliament’s economic development committee. "We have to move beyond the rhetorical exchange between the two camps on the labour market into one that forges a more active partnership," said Mr Patel in a briefing on the New Growth Path’s achievements so far in creating jobs. "If we really want to create jobs we have to look at how to increase output at the factory level." He said it was also not easy to form a partnership in conditions of high income inequality. Mr Patel referred to Statistics SA’s 2010 survey on monthly earnings, which showed that about 1-million workers earned less than R850 a month (less than R195 a week) and that about half of all workers earned less than R650 a week. This contrasted sharply with the findings of a survey released by PricewaterhouseCoopers a few months ago on the 2010 earnings of executive directors of JSE-listed companies with a large market capitalisation, who were found on average to have a remuneration package of about R213000 a week, or R925000 a month. "When you want to forge a common vision in which workers and managers co-operate to produce goods and services, these issues come up. They fuel resentment and a sense of injustice at the economic level," Mr Patel said. [email protected] -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . |
