Promoting Work AND WELL BEING, IN SOUTH AFRICA- and GLOBALLY

1. Promoting Work AND WELL BEING, IN SOUTH AFRICA- and GLOBALLY IDEAS Conference on Work and well-being in the 21st century 5 April 2019 Neil Coleman Institute for Economic Justice

2. Work and dis -ease in South Africa • Being a working class black person, a woman, in work in South Africa does not ensure the well-being of you or your family. Places you in a position of extreme vulnerability, and at the nexus of a toxic combination of social realities: • Although low paid, you are the safety net for unemployed family members. SA has the highest unemployment rate for comparable countries[37% expanded ]. The chances of unemployed family getting jobs is very low- recent calculations by Hassen are that 81% of the unemployed (over 7 million) are long term or ‘structurally unemployed’ (discouraged + long term unemployed). • While SA has a welfare system for children and the elderly, there is no grant for unemployed adults (UIF only for contributors- 7% of the unemployed). • High levels of poverty (over 60%) and high levels of working poverty –IEJ research shows that 59% of full time African workers in SA receive income below the working poor line. Leads to massive indebtedness.

3. The realities facing SAs working poor • Inequality: Massive inequality in wage structure. SA has highest GINI in the world, and this is reflected in wage inequality [figures]. • Working hours: International surveys [eghttps://businesstech.co.za/news/general/116776/mythbusting-are-south-africans-hard-workers/ ] show SAns work amongst the longest hours in the world. On other end of spectrum, growth in insecure temporary work. • Casualisation: proliferation of atypical work arrangements. • Benefits: the lowest paid, most insecure (women and African workers) generally have the fewest or no benefits (RF, health, leave etc.). • Public services: limited and poor. Workers suffer burden of apartheid geography eg high expenses of transport (up to 25% of wage) • Weak enforcement of labour laws. • High level of retrenchments, and lack of investment in productive sector, means few alternatives

4. Well being for workers and working class households Have to ensure a dual intervention which addresses: • Conditions of workers- requires package of interventions to ensure a floor of decent work, including benefits, decent minimum wages, and measures to reduce wage inequality. • Well being and income of working class households- implementation of a NMW must be complemented by income transfers through an employment guarantee scheme (like NREGA) and/ or a BIG, (or universal employment benefits) PLUS availability of affordable and accessible public services.

5. How does SA compare to international situation • SA situation extreme, but trends ito deindustrialisation, growth of working poor, rise in inequality etc are not that dissimilar. • If the race to bottom continues, the future of the worlds working class may begin to look like that of SA WC described above. • The brutal logic of capital post the GFC has been to reconstitute capitalism in a way which drives down wages, working conditions and hollow out / privatise public services, and redirects the resulting surplus to the financialised transational economy (not to reinvestment). • Thesis- working poverty is now internationally the fastest growing form of poverty.

6. Global picture • Different forms in the global North and South, but certain common features • Deindustrialisation • Financialisation and lack of reinvestment in productive economy • Rapid rise in inequality • Downward race on labour standards, working hours, wages, access to benefits etc, people being forced to take second jobs. • Casualisation of work, and destruction of employment contract, zero hour contracts etc. • Rise in working poverty and indebtedness • Attacks on union organisation • The threats posed by the 4th IR, and climate change, & the lack of a just transition on both. • 21st century immiseration of the working class

7. Economic justice ‘must be built into the economy’ IPPR (UK think tank) report of Commission on Economic Justice makes the critically important point that we adding redistribution onto an economy which reproduces fundamentally inequitable outcomes is not a solution: • “Economic justice needs to be ‘hard-wired’ into the way the economy works. It is not sufficient to seek to redress injustices and inequalities simply by redistribution through the tax and benefit system. They need to be tackled at source, in the structures of the economy in which they arise. These include the labour market and wage bargaining, the ownership of capital and wealth, the governance of firms, the operation of the financial system and the rules that govern markets. Economic justice cannot be an afterthought; it must be built in to the economy.”

8. Fighting the race to the bottom • National battles, while critical, cannot defeat the logic of race to the bottom. • Need international package which forces reallocation of surplus to working people, to break the trend of its upward concentration in hands of the 1%. • International minimum wage and package of basic minimum standards (see next slide) • International tax regime which compels effective collection of tax ito wealth and profits, and reallocation to public services- through a minimum effective international corporate and wealth tax, and strong international measures to outlaw and combat tax havens, illicit flows etc. • Measures to compel reinvestment of surplus • Must address reality that notion of full employment increasingly unlikely (cf Scherrer particularly on global South), and therefore CSP important • Other?

9. Universal international Package • International MW floor • Promotion of role of unions, and assertion of comprehensive collective bargaining through a duty to bargain (as in Uruguay) • Employment guarantee (as in India) • Universal unemployment benefit or BIG • Minimum and maximum working hours • Guaranteed benefits for all workers • Minimum effective international tax rate • Package of public services, incl health transport education • Just transition platform on energy, and new technologies (4th IR) • Reimagining economic alternatives ito democratisation of corporate governance, new forms of real democratic say by workers and unions in key decisions etc.

10. ILO package ILO notion of a universal labourguarantee- In preparation of notion of package for this input, happy to see final ILO FOW report (2019) proposes something along similar lines: • Universal labourguarantee: “All workers, regardless of their contractual arrangement or employment status, should enjoy fundamental workers’ rights, an “adequate living wage” (ILO Constitution, 1919), maximum limits on working hours and protection of safety and health at work. Collective agreements or laws and regulations can raise this protection floor. This proposal also allows for safety and health at work to be recognized as a fundamental principle and right at work.” AND ILO calls for: • Expanding time sovereignty. “Workers need greater autonomy over their working time... It will take continued efforts to implement maximum limits on working time alongside measures to improve productivity, as well as minimum hour guarantees to create real choices for flexibility and control over work schedules.” • New measures for economic progress: “New measures of country progress also need to be developed to account for the distributional dimensions of growth, the value of unpaid work performed in the service of households and communities and the externalities of economic activity, such as environmental degradation.”

11. How to take this forward? • International labour movement and other progressive movements should fight for adoption of these standards at the level of the WTO, ILO, UN, etc. • Implementation of these core tax and labour standards could be made mandatory in various ways, including through tax treaties and instruments, universal social clauses in trade agreements etc. • International and domestic procurement regulation could require enforcement of this package of core labour standards as a condition for access to public contracts. This would require amendment of WTO and other trade agreements. • Should identify regulatory bodies which can implement eg on tax. • National collective bargaining and global framework agreements in multinationals • Build support for such a platform in the Global South, & key allies in the North

12. Well-being or barbarism? The system is in crisis. Even Northern social democrats think the system is totally dysfunctional: • Thomas Piketty: inequality is systemic • Rutger Bregman: we now have rentier or parasitic capitalism. • Wolfgang Streeck: the social contract is broken. The question is “how will capitalism end?” Only two real choices: • Radical international economic reform, or • A descent into barbarism