SUNS 4299 Monday 12 October 1998
SOUTH AFRICA: THE STRUGGLE AGAINST 'APARTHEID WAGE GAP'
Johannesburg, Oct 8 (IPS/Gumisai Mutume) -- South Africa is witnessing another struggle against apartheid with thousands of Black workers marching, picketing and demanding a living wage from
their wealthy White employers.
"This year has seen a new trend in strike action," says the Congress of South African Trade Union (Cosatu). "While the number of strikes have dropped over the past years, current ones have been
intense and protracted".
"It is typical of South African employers to hold on to the past even when there are new laws that seek to minimise the number of disputes," says Cosatu.
Living conditions for the majority Black are supposed to have changed after a new Black government came to office in 1994. What hasn't changed is what the Cosatu calls the 'apartheid wage gap' that continues to separate a wealthy minority from the rest of the population.
There are sectors of the economy where the ratio between the highest and lowest paid workers is as high as 100:1. Cosatu says the struggle will continue until the ratio is reduced to 8:1.
Since August employers and striking employees have entered wage negotiations with both sides unwilling to budge. Andrew Levy and Associates, an industrial relations firm, says 1.85 million
man-days (amount of time lost to production) have already been lost in the first three quarters of the year compared to the 650,000 lost over the whole of last year. They have been marked by violence
and are a result of heightened expectations, says Andrew Levy and Associates.
"Employers see negotiations as a game, like chess where we can go there and spend weeks and see who outmanoeuvres who," says Sam Shilowa, general secretary of the 1.8 million-strong Cosatu.
There was a massive teachers strike earlier on in the year and another major one by chemical workers that threatened to halt the economy as fuel delivery was hampered.
More than 50,000 members of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) working in fuel stations and auto component making firms have just returned to work while Lonrho Platinum and steel giant 'Iscor' workers have embarked on their own action. "We are dealing with a very backward industry that does not accept change and transformation," says Mbuyi Ngwenda of NUMSA. "The problem is not around specific issues, it is about the quality of leadership the industry has. They don't want to hear the word transformation."
South African business, however, argues for more flexibility on the labour market -- which in essence means low wages and wage freezes -- if jobs are to be kept and economic growth achieved.
The South African Chamber of Business (SACOB) says business confidence continues to fall, from 95.1 points a year ago to its current 84.4 points. The economy is forecast to grow by half a percentage point this year.
The majority of workers wages fall well below the minimum living level, a trend that has not decreased but increased in recent years as economists point to an economy no longer witnessing
jobless-growth but job-shedding growth.
Wages were controlled under apartheid by the Wage Act, which ensured black workers got far less than their white counterparts. The result is a country with one of the highest income inequalities
-- slightly better than that of Brazil which has the highest.
In a country with a per capita income of more than $3,000 at least 55% of the population are poor and Blacks make up 95% of the poor.
Since Nelson Mandela became President in 1994 industries have been relocating from the former Black homelands because the cheap labour and incentives of the former government have ended.
When two large factories closed down in the Southern Cape they shed more than 1,000 jobs and "the strategy is satellite factories which take people at lower wages," says union offical Freddie Arries.
"If it was 300 Rand, now it is 100 Rand. That is not job creation -- it is exploitation," he says.