Perspective of South African Workforce and COSATU Campaign for Living Wage

This article discusses the major perspectives of South African workforce towards living wage, including wage inequality, involvement and participation, information sharing and knowledge management, human resource management-performance linkage, and organizational implementation. It also explores the COSATU campaign for a living wage, its demands, and challenges faced by the workforce in South Africa.

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HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 2: ASSIGNMENT 2

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Question 2: Perspective of South African Workforce
Given the country’s poor economic outlook, employers are hardening their
positions, citing the recession and South Africa’s looming junk status to
dampen workers’ expectations for better wages and working conditions. In
a challenging economic and political climate the South African workforce
is persistently facing changing the work environment. South African
workforce wants to live and work with dignity and have a sense of security
for themselves and their children. The appeal “World class workers
demand a living wage” means that it is not just wages that must increase,
but working conditions that must improve too. Time and again at
bargaining at the national level, South African workforce highlighted the
challenges of meeting their monthly expenses. With food prices sky-
rocketing, decent salary increases are going to be important for families
to avoid reducing vital nutritional intake and worse, to ward off hunger.
The year-on-year increase on the food basket from January 2015 to
January 2016 was 14.6%. Similarly, the year-on-year increase in the price
of electricity in February 2016 was 12.6% (Adams & Neumark, 2005). The
major perspectives of South African workforce towards living wage are as
follows:
Wage Inequality
From a cross-country perspective, the inequality of opportunity (and
its ratio to overall inequality) is the highest in South Africa. South Africa is
characterized by extreme wage inequality. While part of the population
enjoys wages roughly equivalent to those living in developed economies,
the lower-end wages are comparable to those in the poorest countries.
High wage inequality is compounded by the heavy polarization between
two extremes. The number of workers with high-end jobs is low, while a
large fraction of the working population is employed in very low paid jobs
(Bhorat, et al. 2012).
Involvement and Participation
The other potential challenge faced by the workforce of the South African
workforce for effective individual development. The South African
organizations are unable of effective work design, creating job demand
and physical resources which need to be effectively synchronized to
enhance productivity and overall development. The effective
synchronization of work design with innovation and creativity can
influence the intrinsic motivating attitude and self-efficiency aspect of an
employee. This process directly or indirectly empowers the proactive
behaviour and flexible orientation of the workforce. According to Parker
(2006), the proactive attitude can positively influence the motivation to
innovate. The motivating attitude and self-efficiency aspect increase the
tendency to be creative while performing a task. Through creativity and
innovation, one can help in sustaining a significant equilibrium between
preference, intricacy, and cooperation. According to researches, an
organization should be flexible and malleable to manage the associated

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challenges to innovation and creativity. Although, the priority for the
freedom to opt for new knowledge, experimentation and search in work
design provides necessary thrust for promoting creativity and innovation
(Bunyan, 2016).
Information Sharing and Knowledge Management
The Information Sharing and Knowledge Management have recognized
the way to success and increase overall productivity or outcome. The lack
of transparency in South African establishments requires exploration and
exploitation characteristics for enhancing shared vision, enriched jobs,
trust, culture, discipline and supportive leaders which are the essential
elements requires for promoting development among the workforce. The
ineffective human management, unconstructive evaluation and ineffective
feedback system in the South African organization have ruined the
integrity and efficiency of the workforce. This requires the supportive
employer to effectively contribute to promoting overall development.
According to researches, an organization should be flexible and malleable
to manage the associated challenges to innovation and creativity.
Although, the priority for the freedom to opt for new knowledge,
experimentation and search in work design provides necessary thrust for
promoting creativity and innovation. The increased competition and
extensive globalization have effectively changed the existing process of
business operation. The organizations in this competitive platform require
more effective and advanced Knowledge Management to earn profitable
outcome and for sustainable growth. In this regard, Knowledge
Management plays a major role and helps in attaining more advanced and
effective strategic implementations (Hightower, 2002).
Human Resource Management – Performance Linkage
South Africa is lacking in effective human resource management is set to
control the segment of managing the employees of the organization.
Human resource management helps the organization in selecting the
employees for the organization according to the demands of the business
organization. Strategic HR decisions are important for establishing the
standards for each job role to define the competencies in the organisation.
The proper management function handles the recruitment, interviews and
the hiring to ensure that company is achiving its goals. It monitored the
behaviour of the employees in the organization and helps them to adopt
the working atmosphere of the organization. Human resource
management performs functions by selecting the effective employees for
the organization to maintain the work ethics in the business organization.
Human resource management of an organization plays an important role
in the business activities. The HRM of an organization makes a suitable
working environment for the organization. The HRM follows ethical
approach on selecting or promoting any employee in the organization. It
helps the employees to understand their roles in the organization and
clears the organization goals and perspective. Human resource

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management of an organization enhances the performance of the
employee (Offner, 2013).
Organizational Implementation
If we consider the approaches undertaken, the strategies or structured
methodology employed mainly for promoting long-term sustainable
growth. The lack of comprehensive programs in South African
organizations makes them incapable to employs quality of management
and implementation for sustainable growth. The organization need to
consider innovation and creativity at every level of the operational
process such as individual level, employee level, team level and
organizational level. Effective training and development help in
developing skills and the generation of innovative ideas. The trained HR
managers take the responsibility at the team level and take the effective
leadership approach to guide the team member for innovative idea
generation and help to be more creative in the completion of a task. The
supportive management and encouraging management practices of HRM
ensure the process of promoting innovation within the organization. The
structure and size of the organization perfectly accompany innovative
work (Pippin, 2010).

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Question 3: COSATU campaign- demand for a living wage
During the early 1980s, the issue of drawing up a living wage campaign became a leading
item on the agenda of the South African labour movement. It developed as a response to
pressure from the Congress Alliance for unions to formally adopt the living wage. Many
within the labour movement felt that the living wage did not sufficiently cover the interests of
workers.
COSATU campaign highlighted several issues according to the poster –
unemployment, electricity, town services, education and housing as
special areas for attention. The businessman and rich families that earn
too much to qualify for government support and live a luxury life. Of
course, the most important issue according to the poster capitalism and
poverty. In this regard, the COSATU campaign demands a living wage
(Tladinyane, 2017).
COSATU had formed in 1985 and from its inception had established itself
as a giant of the labour movement. Its predecessor, the Federation of
South African Trade Unions (FOSATU), followed a more worker approach to
trade unionism, focussing largely on labour-related issues and building
strong, worker controlled, democratic union affiliates. COSATU was formed
to unify a wider range of unions and better strengthen worker struggles,
but also as a means to contribute (in a political sense) more powerfully to
the mass movement in the anti-apartheid struggle. COSATU would thus
become the site through which the fight between workerism and populism
would most strongly play out. And as a result of its sheer size and its
growing political authority amongst the working class, decisions taken by
COSATU would have a strong bearing on the direction of the labour
movement and the mass movement as a whole (Wittenberg, 2016).
A living wage was proposed as a more radical alternative -- one that would
prioritise the interests of workers, or the working class more generally,
and pave the way towards socialism. It is the minimum income which is
important to meet the needs of the people. It includes the food, housing
and the other essential needs like clothing. The goal is to focus on the
living wage that allows the work to afford the basic and the decent
standards of living. The flexible nature of the needs in COASTU varies
from location and the household types. But possibly most importantly, it
was the political implications of adopting the minimum wage that caused
much of the scepticism from certain groups of trade unionists and
workers. More specifically, this campaign called for the right to
employment, decent housing, food and clothing. It also called for the right
to free education and freedom of speech, association and movement
(Tladinyane, 2017). By going beyond narrow workplace issues this living
wage campaign was effectively a charter for the interests of the broader
working class. But despite the progressive and even revolutionary nature,
the approach was to negotiate for reforms to parliamentary laws, whereby
they believed that the government would grant major concessions to the
working class to protect itself against the potential growth of working-
class militancy. This indeed became the case in many countries in the
post-War years as the working class across much of the globe won major
gains from their respective governments, leading to the establishment of
"welfare states" (Tladinyane, 2017). However, with the rise to power of

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the National Party, it became clear that major concessions would only be
granted to the already better off white working class, while the growing
black working class would be met only with further repression (von Fintel,
2017).
With most political parties including the COSATUanticipated the struggle
that had been taken up and strengthened by the growing student,
community and workers' movements. Together they were referred to as
the "mass movement". Trade unions, in particular, were the biggest
organisations of the black working class and were often found to be at the
forefront of the anti-apartheid struggle. The COSATU remained an
important organisation in the hearts and minds of ordinary people, largely
because it had taken up arms against the apartheid regime (Adams and
Neumark, 2015). Among other organisations of the black working, class
unions became the central means through which to struggle against
apartheid and capitalism. The COSATU recognised the importance of
bringing trade unions and other mass organisations under the umbrella of
the Congress Alliance.
The COSATU would serve to unify the different factions of the liberation
movement, but it would also importantly mean that the campaign would
remain relevant within the country (Tladinyane, 2017). Representatives of
the Congress Alliance and some unionists who were supporters of the
Alliance began to call on unions to adopt the Minimum wage as a guiding
document (von Fintel, 2017). This led to fierce debate within the labour
movement as a whole, as some unionists and workers believed that the
campaign did not cover workers’ issues significantly enough. Others
insisted that even if implemented thoroughly, the Charter would not do
away with capitalist production -- meaning that any post-apartheid society
would remain an exploitative one based on class divisions (Tladinyane,
2017). Socialists within the labour movement were also very wary of de
facto accepting the COSATU as the head of the mass movement by
adopting the Living wage. Some of those who objected to the adoption of
this Charter called for the unions to draw up (Offner, 2013). The members
are working on winning the wage increase above the rate of inflation
which was not based on the employers goodwill but is based on the
member struggling for the same.
Therefore, there has been constant development in the field of academic
literature which tries to fathom the influence of increasing the minimum
wage level on the employment. Recent studies confirm that there is
absolutely little impact seen on the employment scenario even though
there is an increase in the minimum wage pay rate. The situation does not
even change when there is slow down evident in the labour market.
“Research suggests that a minimum-wage increase could have a small
stimulating effect on the economy as low-wage workers spend their
additional earnings, raising demand and job growth, and providing some
help on the jobs front”(Gentle, 2015).

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