Johannesburg - Trade unions are pushing for a number of changes to the proposed national minimum wage that would make it a far more meaningful intervention – but still not a living wage.
The unions’ main way to get a higher minimum wage is by demanding the scrapping of a key feature of the expert panel’s report and its R20-per-hour proposal.
This is the so-called wage freeze, whereby the R20 only really becomes enforceable in 2019, making the national minimum wage in effect R20 in 2019 terms.