It is distressing that the final steps towards legislating a minimum wage — this country’s most important labour law since the labour relations framework was designed in the ’90s — seem to have gone awry at the last minute. While much of business at first balked at the idea, there is now consensus that a minimum wage of R20 an hour will be good for society and will lessen inequality. It is estimated that 6-million people could have their earnings lifted. And, says organised business, if the exemption process works well — which unfortunately is not a given — then job losses will be mitigated. Business’s arrival at this point and the arrival of organised labour at a point at which the R20 rate was considered acceptable as a start came at the end of a torturous process of negotiation. At the end of two-and-a-half years, the National Economic Development and Labour Chamber (Nedlac) produced a report in which each decision had been negotiated. In other words, the report was the product o...
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