BL Premium reports that in a webinar on Tuesday on the wage negotiating outlook for 2022, well-known labour economist Andrew Levy said it was likely that under the current circumstances other industries might take the lead from the government, which successfully challenged implementing the last leg of a three-year wage agreement reached in 2018 due to a lack of money.
He maintained that the private sector would do this “in order to maintain viability in the current economic climate”. The coronavirus pandemic has battered the SA economy, which declined 6.4% in 2020 and resulted in a loss of 1.4-million jobs. The unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng also impacted the economy, which lost R50bn during the mayhem. The war in Ukraine is set to inflict another economic shock that could lead to a spike in inflation and result in increased wage demand and “strong pressures at the negotiating table”. But, Levy said wage increases were falling faster than “we have experienced for decades”. In his estimation, the anticipated range for the average level of settlement was between 4.8% and 5.9%. As a general rule, wage settlements traditionally averaged 2% to 3% above inflation, “allowing for a rise in real wages”, but this did not happen in 2021 “due to the aftermath of the pandemic and employer resistance and wage levels have now narrowed in relation to the CPI”. Levy said centralised negotiations that would set the trend for wage settlement levels in 2022 included the public sector, the local government sector, the steel and engineering industries sector, and the gold mining sector, which have a combined workforce of more than 2.5-million people. The NUM and Amcu are set to embark on a wage strike at Sibanye-Stillwater’s gold operations from Wednesday evening.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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