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Labour Q&A with Terry Bell
Fin24 user Doug Harris believes that labour unions have never and nor will they ever be the driving force behind ‘new’ job creation. He writes:
Dear Terry,
I am not sure if you are aware but we have a major problem with unemployment in South Africa. Hopefully you will appreciate that fundamentally labour unions have never and nor will they ever be the driving force behind ‘new’ job creation.
There is a saying that if we give business the right to fire they will hire - and this applies to small, medium or large business equally. Labour unions and the government currently inhibit free market forces and are clearly not proponents of this essential requirement for South Africa’s long term successful socioeconomic progress.
I cannot emphasize enough, for a whole host of reasons that South Africa right now, on the job front, is a ship at sea with a typhoon approaching. By world standards our education system is already on the rocks. And as you are no doubt aware jobs and education are inextricably linked.
How are we are going to compete in a global economy if our system of labour practices and education are not up to scratch? We have an embittered youth who are disenchanted with their job prospects and they are swelling in numbers daily.
I tire somewhat of your seemingly endless support of labour unions and your apparent favouring of communist ideals. In my humble opinion South African labour unions are too strongly linked to a political past and for this reason are out of step with modern labour practices and sadly they are not prepared to let go.
As you are clearly an educated individual and as you have a platform in the media perhaps your time would be better spent, at least on occasion, in educating the public and possibly even the unions themselves on the imperative nature of unfettered new job creation.
Terry Bell responds:
Dear Doug,
You obviously have not been reading everything I write. Or perhaps you misunderstand what I do write. I have listed unemployment - and given what I think are the major reasons for it - on numerous occasions.
My Inside Labour columns are also geared to encourage discussion and debate and I have made clear why I support labour unions and why I oppose those unions that have degenerated or strayed from their democratic principles.
You also appear to think that all unions are politically affiliated. They are not. Only Cosatu as a federation is a formal ally of the governing ANC, along with 17 of its 19 affiliates. Perhaps significantly, the largest Cosatu affiliate, Numsa, is no longer part of the governing alliance.
When it comes to hiring and firing at will, you display the sort of backward looking to the anarchy of the early industrial revolution. Here one needs no polemical instruction: reading Charles Dickens alone should be suffice.
When it comes to job creation, the unions have often put forward policies on issues such as import substitution and labour intensive work that may have alleviated the problem.
However, as I have frequently pointed out, there is a global problem of over capacity and over production, the result largely of the development of the microprocessor and the automation and robotics that stem from this.
So, while we have the technology (and potential capacity) to feed, clothe, house and otherwise liberate humanity we face a position where hundreds of millions of people around the world have already, effectively, become redundant. Perhaps you should give some thought to this.
Regards
Terry
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