Celia Dugger has a story in today’s New York Times revealing one of the most vexing difficulties confronting South Africa. On the one hand, minimum wage laws are intended to protect workers from starvation wages (and stand as testament to the strength of South Africa’s labour unions). But on the other hand, enforcement of those laws, which include shutting down operations that do not adhere to the laws, can cost people jobs that they desperately need, even if the pay is gallingly low.
Without enforcement, minimum wage laws will fast become a chimera. And the blame should fall on those employers exploiting vulnerable workers who know that in most cases it is these renegade jobs or nothing. It is hard to disagree with Dugger’s argument that these tensions represent “just one sign of how acute South Africa’s long-running unemployment crisis has become. With their own industry in ruinous decline, the victim of low-wage competition from China, and too few unskilled jobs being created in South Africa” workers fear “being out of work more than getting stuck in poorly paid jobs.”
Un- and under-employment are systemic problems and the government will rightfully bear the brunt of blame for the absence of job creation. But in the long run the solution is not simply to ignore the laws but rather to bring all businesses in compliance with them.
