LETTER: Bloated boss pay obscene, but not to blame

While there is no doubt that some of the salaries of senior management in the private sector are excessive and not aligned to competence levels (the same can be said of the public sector), wage and salary levels are in themselves not a driver of a lack of competitiveness (“How bosses earning big bucks is behind SA’s economic malaise”, January 12).

The primary driver is low productivity and efficiency across all levels of the workforce, and the lack of a realistic developmental economic policy. There are many reasons for this, including poor educational standards in the workforce, union-driven closed shop agreements, government inefficiency driven by cadre deployment, dysfunctional service delivery, and the effects of corruption.

Most of these reasons are directly attributable to governmental failure, not bloated private sector executive salaries, as obscene as some of them are.

Nick Steen
Via BusinessLIVE

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