Government may not have realised it at the time, but it opened a Pandora’s Box two years ago when it foolishly committed to investigating the feasibility of a national minimum wage (NMW). Now that all the research has been done, it’s hard not to conclude that a national minimum wage is a terrible idea. Unfortunately, before any research had been done, government accepted the principle of a national minimum wage. From that point, all that was to be determined was the level at which it should be set. At Nedlac, the forum ostensibly meant to bring together labour, business and society, negotiations deadlocked after 18 months. It was a predictable standoff: labour wanted a minimum wage of R3,500/month, business argued for R1,800/month, and government wanted something in between. To make it worse, any agreement was rendered even more tricky when two of SA’s top universities produced large bodies of diametrically opposed research. Deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa has now appointed a panel...
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