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Government has once again declared a state of disaster, this time in response to the floods in KwaZulu-Natal. Presumably feels it needs this extra power to avoid being constrained by its own laws and regulations in responding to the immediate disaster.
The same can be said of the unemployment crisis, which is now a disaster as businesses and entrepreneurs face numerous regulatory barriers in starting and operating them, including in hiring employees.
The National Development Plan (NDP) calls for full employment by 2030 and that goal will certainly not be achieved. We will be lucky if we have employment growth by then.
That we likely will not achieve any real progress by 2030 calls into question the entire approach taken by government, including in the NDP, to plan for economic outcomes. In South Africa this has never worked, going all the way back to the Growth, Employment, and Redistribution policy, which was a great success, but missed its employment growth goals. Since then, we have had the Industrial Action Plan (while manufacturing declined), the Integrated Resource Planning (while we were getting less and less energy for higher and higher prices), and economic development plans. All these sought to achieve growth without allowing South Africans to trade freely with one another and with outsiders.
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The secret is that trade cannot be centrally planned. It occurs where it is most convenient for the parties involved, and not simply where government thinks it should happen. The Free Market Foundation has over the years painstakingly argued for greater freedoms for South Africans, especially the freedom to trade. These arguments were largely ignored, and we now sit with the inevitable and predictable result.
Urgent reforms are required in the labour market, where participants are burdened with regulation and offering any job is unnecessarily risky. First, a company is forced to make sure it hires the “right” applicant in terms of the Employment Equity Act, and the targets for that company flowing from the Act. A company cannot just hire anyone in terms of competence, they are forced to consider a person’s race and gender too.
Both parties cannot agree on a wage that is less than what government is willing to accept. It does not matter if the applicant is really desperate for a job and has not worked in years, and the business really needs the employee but only at that wage.
Third, when you start paying the employee, their pay will attract additional taxes from government. Even though the company is already taxed on its income and on every sale and purchase through value added tax, that is not enough. The employees’ income is also taxed through personal income tax and other payroll taxes such as the Unemployment Insurance Fund.
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Finally, if the employee is bad at their job, disciplining them is also regulated. You have to do it, not according to the agreed contract, but according to government legislation, including going through the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.
It’s no wonder that almost half of South Africans are unemployed.
There are also troubling trends from the latest Labour Dynamics study by Statistics SA, covering 2015-2022.
According to the study, hours worked were highest in machine/plant operator as well as services and sales occupations. Not surprisingly if you understand the effects of the national minimum wage, the lowest hours worked were in the domestic work occupations. In fact, the minimum wage is doing its intended job in raising median monthly earnings from R3 100 in 2015 to R4 000 in 2020. But at what cost given the rest of the employment statistics?
The only way to open the path of employment for the 77% of those aged 15 to 24 who are unemployed, is to repeal all of these regulations.
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Alternatively, government can take the approach of exempting the particularly vulnerable groups such as women, youth and black people from the employment laws via a job-seekers exemption certificate, which will allow the unemployed to negotiate what they are paid.
. Mpiyakhe Dhlamini is a libertarian, writer, programmer and a former analyst at the Free Market Foundation
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