Manufacturers want more than ‘talk shops’ on transformation
SOCIAL dialogue is of little value in transforming South Africa’s economy as it only reinforces the positions adopted by the government, business and labour, a manufacturing forum in Sandton heard on Wednesday.It must be “replaced with something entirely different”, including better government leadership on the economy and pragmatic action instead of “talk-shops”. But the shape and form of this remains undefined and not agreed upon.“The way we rely on social dialogue must be done away with and replaced with something completely different,” Coenraad Bezuidenhout, director of the Manufacturing Circle said.“It doesn’t bring government, business and labour together, but just reinforces these constituencies,” Mr Bezuidenhout said.This kind of social dialogue was “not the way to institutionalise” economic growth as it was “adversarial and political”, he said. Instead, wage bargaining needed to be decentralised to allow unions and companies to “do pact-building from the bottom up”, rather ...
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