Transcript paid annual leave, and sick leave

NUMSA Submission to the PC Labour
on the National Minimum Wage
June 5th 2015, Parliament RSA
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Freedom Charter on work
There Shall be Work and Security
• Men and women of all races shall receive equal pay for equal
work;
• There shall be a forty-hour working week, a
national minimum wage, paid annual leave, and
sick leave for all workers, and maternity leave on
full pay for all working mothers;
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Economic Context and the Need for the NMW
• Unemployment (expanded) is 35%
• More unemployed now than in 1994.
• Unemployment getting worse, not better:
• May 2008: 5.1 million.
• May 2013: 7 million.
• Gini coefficient amongst highest in world (0.63)
• Over 20% living below the food poverty line R300 a month
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Bargaining Council system is not NMW
• Bargaining councils cover just 9% of workforce
• Minimum salaries differ depending on sector.
• Mining, manufacturing, and public sector above R4,000
• Other sectors less than R3,000
• 70% of the workers have their salaries determined by employer
only
• Sectoral minimum wages are widely violated and extremely
low; in reality workers are paid on average 35% less than
legislated sectoral minimum wage;
• 54% of workers either receive no regular wage increments
or have wages determined solely by employers
• Over the last 20 years, workers’ share of GDP has gone down,
whilst owners of capital have become richer.
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The Bargaining Council System is not a NMW
2014 Negotiated
Wages
2015 Negotiated
Wages
Hourly
Monthly Hourly
Monthly
General MEIBC
33.67
5656.56
37.04
6222.72
Electric cables
35.71
5999.28
39.28
6599.04
Structural Engineering
27.76
4663.68
30.54
5130.72
Five Grade Schedule
33.32
5597.76
35.82
6017.76
Vehicle Drivers
37.33
6271.44
40.88
6867.84
Gate & Fence
Manufacturing
25.27
4245.36
27.80
4670.4
Electrical Contracting
17.24
2896.32
Civil Engineering
22.89
3845.52
General MIBCO
22.16
3722.88
23.93
4020.24
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Vulnerable Workers Salaries in 2014
Hourly
Monthly
Farm Workers
11.66
2273.52
Domestic Workers
9.65
1823.85
Contract Cleaners
14.19
2764.90
Security Officer
11.74
2441.70
Forestry
12.41
2410.41
Hospitality
14.87
2900.08
Taxi Marshals
10.94
2275.81
Taxi Drivers
15.68
2847.01
Wholesale & Retail
15.71
3065.13
EPWP
8.82
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The minimum wage must not become the
maximum wage
• We must avoid minimum wage becoming also maximum
wage.
• Struggle for NMW and struggle for living wage through
improved collective bargaining arrangements are
complementary.
• Collective Bargaining will and must continue to improve
the minimum wage in all sectors
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There shall be a forty-hour working week, a
national minimum wage, paid annual leave,
and sick leave for all workers, and maternity
leave on full pay for all working mothers
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Millions do not work a forty-hour working week
Millions do not enjoy paid annual leave, and sick leave
Millions of women do not enjoy maternity leave on full pay:
24% work more than 48 hours a week. Average is 44 hours
Only 32% have medical aid
43% have no paid maternity/paternity leave
31% have no paid sick leave
50% have no pension or retirement fund
33% have no paid annual leave.
Here is the National Minimum Wage!
• Not negotiable.
• Fundamental requirement for millions of South African workers.
• Full freedom and liberation must include a National minimum Wage
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The apartheid wage structure remains intact
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In 2013, half SA workers received less than R3,033a month.
National average salary is R15,000 a month.
So half of all workers earn far less than the national average.
That is the apartheid wage structure:
• Most workers earn very little
• Small number earn a huge amount.
• In 2010 median earnings of African worker R2,167 and white
worker R9,500
• Manufacturing sector:
• Average income of African worker R5,454
• Average income of white worker R21,817.
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Demand for National Minimum Wage is
essential element in our struggle
• Abolish super exploitative wage of majority of SA workers
• Secure work and income security
• Fight poverty which largely afflicts Black and African
workers
• Win income equality in a free and democratic South Africa
• Secure collective bargaining rights for all SA workers
• End child labour, compound labour, tot system and
contract labour.
• Abolish South African racist and apartheid colonial
capitalism
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NMW must be part of fundamental
restructuring of the SA economy
• NMW cannot be seen in isolation from the rest of
the economy.
• SA economy cannot thrive in current form:
remained fundamentally unchanged from
apartheid colonial era.
• We cannot continue to base our economy on
extraction and export of raw minerals.
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Restructure the economy
• Nationalization
• Lower interest rates
• Preferential financing for chosen industries which apply the
National Minimum Wage
• Limiting financial market speculation
• Stopping companies from illegally exporting profit, estimated
currently at between 10% and 20% of GDP
• Radical wealth redistribution
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Need National Wage Policy
• Abolish apartheid wage gap
• Abolishing all conditions which impede development of trade
unions and rights of all workers:
• To organize in trade unions
• To bargain for wages and conditions of employment
• To strike
• Wage policy must be part of new post-apartheid, non-capitalist
growth path and industrial strategy for full employment.
• Industrial strategy must focus on:
• Job creation in sectors with higher wages
• Growth in sectors that can contribute to increased domestic
demand and benefit from it.
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Essence of National Minimum Wage
• Rooted in egalitarian society
• Majority needs Africans, not minority profit, determine
economic and social policies.
• Abolish the colonial status, in economy and society, of Black
and African working class.
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NMW must be part of comprehensive social
security system
• Objective to lift large numbers of South Africans out of
poverty
• To achieve objective NMW must be linked to other
measures to deal with inequality, poverty and
unemployment.
• Must be part of comprehensive social security system,
including:
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Grant or living allowance for unemployed
Improved retirement contribution by employers
Improved UIF contribution by employers
Improved quality service delivery by the state in transport,
housing, education & health
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The correlation between rising food prices in
relation to income have plunged people into
poverty
• The General Household Survey (GHS 2013) shows that
increases in food prices have worsened the threat of hunger for
people living in poverty
• From Feb 2013 to Feb 2014, the commodity prices of maize
increased by 50% in the short to median term, increasing food
insecurity
• Food prices have almost doubled and salary prices are not
keeping up to these increases
• As prices become more volatile, vulnerable households find
their consumption decisions affected by higher prices in the
markets and reduce spending power
• Having a decent wage ultimately determines peoples access to
food and food security
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NMW creates jobs
• Capital says that NMW will destroy jobs. In fact: This is
nonsense.
• In Brazil, between 2003 and 2010, NMW increased by 81%. 17
million formal sector jobs created.
• In Uruguay, between 2003 and 2014, reduction in unemployment
when minimum wages radically increased.
• In SA, a UCT study found that increased minimum wages from
Sectoral Determinations led to increase in employment
• In 2009 in UK, Low Pay Commission found that NMW had no
significant negative effect on employment. Named “the most
successful government policy of the last 30 years”.
• In 2009, a study of 64 minimum-wage studies around the world
showed no bad effects from NMW.
• NMW causes economy to grow, which increases jobs.
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NMW must have teeth
• Law must be comprehensive:
• Include enforcement
• Ensure no exemptions
• Ensure no job losses
• Adjust upwards existing sectoral
determinations; no downward variation
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Our demands
• Declare National Minimum Wage now. No 5 year investigation
• Dynamic and mobile NMW adjusted upwards for inflation and
cost of living
• National Wage Policy to abolish apartheid wage gap, combat
income inequalities, remove impediments to collective
bargaining and all trade union rights.
• Immediately abolish labour brokering, child labour, compound
labour and all abusive, super exploitative labour practices.
• Guarantee a 40 hour working week and ensure compliance.
• Ensure that men and women of all races earn equal pay for
work of equal value.
• Stop and withdraw from all current efforts to water down trade
union rights and essentialise sections of the working class.
• Guarantee paid annual leave and sick leave for all workers, and
maternity leave on full pay for all working mothers.
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Our direction
• Destroy current SA economic foundation, dominated by
imperialism and run by white monopoly capitalism and their
parasitic black allies.
• Radical destruction of current growth path and replacement
with socialist, democratically owned, controlled and managed
economy
• Socialism is the only way out of the historic and current South
African human and environmental crisis.
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The way forward for the working class
• We are participating in these hearings so that the voice of the
working class is heard
• History teaches that the working class will always be victims
unless they learn to see class interests.
• In our demands we have sought to unearth the true class
intentions and origins on the NMW
• It is time to unite working class behind demand for NMW and
all demands of Freedom Charter.
• The real struggle for the national minimum wage will not be
won in public hearings. It will be won by the working class in
action, on the streets, united in its demands.
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A luta continua!
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