Tag: minimum wage

Expanding operations across borders is becoming the norm in the modern business landscape, but with this expansion comes the challenge of managing payroll on a global scale. It’s a complex and crucial task that involves navigating diverse regulations, juggling multiple currencies and ensuring accurate payments to employees worldwide.

There is a rare opportunity to right a lot of South Africa’s wrongs in one go. Corruption and unemployment are two major roadblocks. Permit me to explain how they can be simultaneously addressed within the current administration. I suggest an amnesty largely on the African National Congress (ANC’s) past wrongdoing in office in return for liberalisation of labour laws. This may be for a bit further down the line.

Hiring registered businesses is more than just cost-and-time savings, it’s for the greater good of the country. As much as addressing South Africa’s dire unemployment rate is critical, building industry role players recommend that businesses and members of the public tread carefully when securing the services of unregistered contractors.

Raising the minimum wage may seem like a way to help alleviate the plight of working South Africans, but all it really accomplishes is pricing more and more people out of the job market.

According to Statistics South Africa, the SA unemployment rate in the third Quarter (Q3) of 2023 was 41.2% (7.8 million people). In addition, youth unemployment (ages 15 to 34 years) in Q3 was 4.6 million, out of a total of 12.4 million unemployed people in the country. The total population is 61.02 million.

Since 2013, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) under wannabe despot Julius Malema has had seven so-called non-negotiable pillars. At their core, these pillars are stereotypical, rote policies of an ill-thought national socialist state. In practice, they will be disastrous for this country.

As the countdown to the implementation of the new minimum wage draws closer, the nation finds itself at the precipice of a profound transformation in its labour landscape. With revised minimum wage regulations set to come into force on March 1st, 2024, employers across the country are bracing themselves for a pivotal moment that promises to reshape the dynamics of work and remuneration. 

Removing the causes of mass youth unemployment in South Africa would have multiple positive consequences for job seekers. If small businesses and households, “the natural employers of young and untrained workers in an open labour market”, were free of the burden of the minimum wage and other unnecessary regulatory burdens that have been imposed on them, they could make an unprecedent contribution to the economy.

Read our exclusive cover story titled Let me work! - official violation of the rights of the unemployed must end by Eustace Davie, Director, Free Market Foundation, plus a host of other topical management articles written by professionals, consultants and academics in the June/July 2023 edition.

“Don't harm your neighbour” is much better advice. This is a passive rule. It does not require you to do anything, just to refrain from doing some things. I believe the gap between these two rules summarises the gap in Western society between left and right, between Democrats and Republicans, between the kindly, caring, sharing, socialists and the individualistic, thinking, independent, self-reliant capitalists. Both sides passionately believe that their rule is the better one.