Bloomberg reports that Tito Mboweni, the architect of many of SA’s labour laws, said it might be time to review them to ensure they weren’t impeding economic growth.
Mboweni, who is SA’s current finance minister, told an investment conference on Thursday that when he served as the first post-apartheid labour minister from 1994 to 1998 “we made a number of mistakes that need to be attended to.” He asked: “To what extent are some of the labour policies we put in place acting as binding constraints? How do we make sure that our labour laws don’t impinge on the ability of small and medium enterprises to function effectively?” SA’s labour laws have been praised and criticised in turn for protecting workers rights and discouraging hiring in a country where a third of the labour force is unemployed. While labour unions would oppose any changes, a commission should perhaps be set up to examine the laws and amend them where necessary, said Mboweni. The minister was also adamant that the Treasury would not back down on its insistence that any wage agreement for civil servants must not breach the government’s fiscal ceiling. In February, Mboweni announced a three-year pay freeze in the public sector as part of plans to rein in spending, reduce the budget deficit and stabilise debt. Unions, which are demanding increases of inflation, which averaged 3.3% last year, plus four percentage points, have threatened to strike.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Antony Sguazzin at Moneyweb
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