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News & Views by Terry Bell
Browsing All posts tagged under »wages«
Pay rises, policy alternatives & regime change
The labour movement has a number of policy alternatives that deserve serious consideration.
Marikana, farms and forestry
November 24, 2012
There are none so blind as those that will not see. It is a saying popularised more than 300 years ago and it has had marked resonance following the bloody events at Marikana and the more recent upheavals among the fruit and wine farms of the Western Cape. At Marikana, 34 striking miners were shot […]
Wage gaps, Depressions and war
April 24, 2012
South Africa may not have the largest wage and welfare gap between chief executives and the average pay of workers. That distinction, says Richard Trumka, president of the major labour federation in the United States, the AFL-CIO, belongs to the USA.
Doing dirty work, exposing dirty tricks
March 30, 2012
At the forefront of the fight against local government corruption and maladministration in South Africa are municipal workers, many of them doing dirty, socially necesary labour for wages that are a tiny fraction of what is paid to many managers. This is one aspect of what local trade unions see as a growing social, humanitarian and economic crisis that urgently needs dramatic and radical remedial measures.
Hope on the domestic slavery horizon
August 5, 2011
The International Labour Organisation has finally placed domestic workers — the nannies, maids, chars and house helps — on the same footing as other workers in terms of a decent work agenda. At least in theory. But, as the South African experience shows, there is a very long was to go in practice — and not only for domestic workers.
The most exploited — and largely ignored — workers
July 29, 2011
Fancy being able to walk to work and to pay just 10% of your wages for accommodation? Sounds idyllic? Perhaps. Unless you are a farm worker in South Africa where the latest pay increase of 4.5% made the minimum wage just R1,375 a month and where between R400 and R700 could be charged for electricity alone.
A critical — largely ignored — wage battle looms
April 22, 2011
South Africa's annual battle over wages and conditions has this year been all but obscured by reports of political infighting focussed largely on the May 18 local government elections. Troubling news from Swaziland, Libya and Côte d’Ivoire has also tended to push this yearly tussle between bosses and unions into the background. Yet the 2011 wage round is arguably more critical than any in recent years — and will almost certainly have a direct bearing on the outcome of the May 18 poll.
Terry Bell Writes 
July 4, 2013
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