LETTER: Flooding the engine room of job creation

Small business is the engine room of job creation and while small businesses cannot compete with big business, they are still subject to the same rules and regulations and the same bargaining council structures as big business. 

Many small businesses hire foreign nationals for a host of reasons, and instances where their employment is immoral and illegal should be reported and prosecuted accordingly. Such illegal employment contracts must be pursued through the authorities. We have the laws and the structures that can handle such illegality.

It should not be a case of trying to convince South Africans to employ locals when we have adequate systems to tackle illegal employment (“Employing South Africans is an economic imperative”, July 4). No-one should break the law.

The real issue is that unemployment is getting worse and government is regulating small business to the extent that they are being throttled. The number of legally employed foreigners as a percentage of the workforce is negligible. The difference will come when small business is properly deregulated, which will encourage more employment and the opening of more small businesses.

Our labour laws, including the extension of collective bargaining deals, act as a handbrake to job creation (“Extension of bargaining council agreements is key to labour market certainty”, July 4). It is understood that Justice John Murphy ruled that the extension of collective bargaining isn’t unconstitutional. That should not be the argument; it should be the encouragement of job creation.

We cannot continue with exactly the same set of rules and expect job creation to miraculously occur.

Michael Bagraim, MP
DA deputy shadow employment & labour minister

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