Cofesa responds to President Ramaphosa’s call ‘Help to save SA’ and the 115 Corporate leaders who have signed the ‘Help to save SA pledge’. Corporate leader Dr. Lawrence McCrystal of Cofesa rallies industry players, including MEIBC, SEIFSA, and affiliated associations, to retract the request for extending main agreements to non-parties. Breaking free from historic crony-capitalist ties, they seek to dismantle bargaining councils, echoing success stories from Margaret Thatcher and Jim Bolger, in pursuit of economic growth and fair competition.
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‘It’s time for Corporate SA to do a ‘Thatcher’ manoeuvre and free our economy from bargaining council extensions to non-parties’ – Cofesa.
By Dr Lawrence McCrystal*
‘We, Corporate SA has close business relations with our compatriots, MEIBC, SEIFSA and its affiliated employer associations (the Captains of industry) to convince them to withdraw their request to the Minister to extend the main agreement to non-parties and thereby break the gridlock strangling our economy’ say Dr Lawrence McCrystal chairman and Adv Hein van der Walt, director of Cofesa in an email in support of the 115 signatories.
Not trade unions, not government, not NEDLAC, not Parliament, not the President but we, Corporate SA can move our compatriots, our fellow directors, colleagues, SEIFSA, MEIBC and affiliated employer organisations to recall their requests to Minister Thulas Nxexi of Employment and Labour, to extend the main agreement to non-parties, a practice that sanctions the Dept of Employment and Labour’s centralist Cosatu-ANC patronages and communists to manipulate the economy and thwarts economic growth.
Now is the time for our captains of industry to pull the plug on extension of bargaining council agreements to non-parties-
Of our population with 12 m unemployed, only .07% (41 713 in 2017) of the potential work-force are members of trade unions that are parties to Bargaining Councils.
Mr Rob Hersov blamed Corporate SA of being “cowards”. Big business and government are seen to be in crony-capitalist cahoots. In many countries ruling parties rely on big business for funding, and big business need government on their side to get licences and win tenders. Given that the raison d’être of business is to make money, maybe it is not in their interest to offend the government of the day.
Sharing in the spoils of bargaining councils is being in ‘cahoots’. – For more than 30 years the Free Market Foundation, Neasa and Cofesa have campaigned against corporate industry’s profiting from bargaining councils, by protecting their markets against the competition of non-parties and keeping out new entrants.
It is time to abolish bargaining councils like in UK and New Zealand.
Who governs the country?’ During the national strikes of the 1970’s, Edward Heath asked, ‘Who governs the country?’. The country was not quite sure. The trade unions had too much legal and political power vested in their leaders, too little in their members. A series of new laws were needed to diminish their immunities and increase their members’ rights.
Ms Margaret Thatcher turned the British economy around when she abolished bargaining councils in the 1980’s.
- 1980 Ms Margaret Thatcher blamed the ‘bargaining councils’ for obstructing economic growth and got rid of the council system. With the councils out of the way, she was able to deal directly with industry leaders and turned the economy around. Without the closed shop, workers were no longer forced to be members of the trade unions in their industries.
- In Britain the closed shop enforced a mass of restrictive practices.
Ms Margaret Thatcher who abolished bargaining councils in the 1980’s turned the British economy around.
Unions demanded national agreements on the improbable argument that conditions are identical across the country.
The trade union leaders were barons, but Mrs Thatcher did not make the mistake of giving them a Magna Carta. She simply stepped past them to the men and women they claimed to represent.
Bargaining councils enforced a mass of restrictive practices. Throughout the 1950’s Lord Beaverbrook happily met even the most absurd union demands – calculating that such demands might break his weaker rivals.
Big business paid their labour a king’s ransom to maintain their oligopoly and shut out newcomers. Most were bled white according to Simon Jenkins of The Times.
Mr Jim Bolger of New Zealand, who abolished the nationwide agreements by monolithic union power blocs with ‘compulsory union membership that bred wasteful strikes and scandalous abuse’.
‘Only through a higher level of economic activity can we get the jobs we need in New Zealand’ he said.
In months Mr Bolger produced startling results, bringing down inflation from 15% to 1,3% and increasing the foreign trade surplus by 500%.
‘The fall in average wages predicted by our critics hasn’t materialized’. Appeasement of a minority came at huge cost for the economy and worsening poverty.
Bargaining councils is a legacy of our colonial past and of apartheid to protect ‘artisans’ against the untrained, ‘borrowed’ from English law between 1914 and 1924 to reserve jobs (closed shop) for qualified artisans and to ‘legally’ exclude/discriminate against unqualified locals, even prosecuting them when working in those industries.
- As ‘work reservation’ it was a cornerstone of apartheid. Over time many bargaining councils in SA, like the councils in the building industry, dissolved.
- Unions demand national agreements on the improbable argument that conditions are identical all over the country for power and for selfish economic reasons.
- SA bargaining council levies inflate wage bills by between 18% and 33% thereby opening our markets to cheap imported goods. In five years the imports of footwear have increased by 500%, causing local factories and other businesses to close resulting in a huge loss of jobs.
- Prominent union leaders have already declared their commitment to fundamental economic reform. The World Bank, and other researchers, have identified the bargaining council systemin South Africa as a major constraint on economic growth.
- Mr Trevor Manuel said that ‘South Africa risked the entrenchment of a labour aristocracy and the further marginalisation of outsiders. Bargaining councils entrench a labour aristocracy and marginalise outsiders by giving legal protection for large corporations to monopolise markets and for unions to secure protected wages and benefits for an elitist few employees’ (Sunday Times September 25 2005 BT p 9 Finance Minister Mr Trevor Manuel in 2005).
‘The difficulty with change lies not so much in developing new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones’.- John Maynard Keynes and
Archbishop Tutu said : ‘Poverty is man- made’.
At the launch of Dr Anthea Jeffery’s powerful analysis COUNTDOWN TO SOCIALISM Mr Mark Oppenheimer questioned ‘What are we going to do about it?’
Her book sets the scene to ‘Help save SA’.
It is do-able.
Read also:
- BN@10: Rob Hersov ‘reserves a special place in Hell’ for appeasing SA business execs
- BN@10: Mashaba interview – Unholy pact between Big Business and ANC
- Anthea Jeffery: ANC’s blind pursuit of Soviet-era NDR pushing SA into death spiral
*Dr Lawrence McCrystal, BSc London University, B Econ (Hons); M Econ; PhD Economics, (Honours & Masters – Cum Laude) and Adv Hein van der Walt Hons BA Communications LLB. [email protected]
