SA strike rate highest in world

SA has one of the highest incidences of strikes in the world and loses millions of working days every year due to workers downing tools.

According to economist Mike Schüssler, SA lost an average of 322 working days per 1000 employers in the five years to 2009. This is almost double the 164 days lost in Canada and almost 10 times the 35 days lost in Italy, two countries which are perceived to have a high incidence of strikes.

Australia and the UK, which were very prone to strikes in the '80s, lost only 25 and 24 days, respectively.

Based on data from Andrew Levy Employment, which shows SA lost 14.6 million working days due to strikes last year - which included a long public sector strike - the working days lost per 1000 workers were more than 1400 last year.

And this year could be worse as Adcorp expects the number of days lost due to strikes and work stoppages to increase by 22%.

Labour economist Andrew Levy said SA has lost about three million man-days due to strikes so far this year, whereas the normal average for the first six month of the year is less than 400000.

Schüssler said the big problem was that the working days lost did not only affect the business where the strike is taking place, but also affect upstream and downstream businesses, which means the actual working days lost can be up to three times as many.

"This is not good for the world's least employed nation, with the exception of some war zones," Schüssler said.

"SA is becoming the perfect example used in economic history classes showing that high strike levels and inflexible labour markets cause extremely low employment levels."

Schüssler said current and past figures on working days lost would scare investors. "All over the world labour unions act more strategically and think more tactically than SA unions do," he said.

But according to Cosatu spokesman Patrick Craven, the responsibility for working days lost must be placed firmly with the employers.

"(Employers) cannot try to blame workers for their own inability to conduct negotiations in a constructive way which would avoid strikes," Craven said.

The overwhelming majority of disputes were settled without strikes, he said. The view that unions were irresponsible and went on strikes for no particular reason was not accurate, as was the perception about a "strike season", which suggests all strikes are planned for a certain time of year, he said.

Members of the National Union of Mineworkers in the gold mine and coal industries started to strike shortly after the two-and-a-half-week strike in the petroleum industry, which partly coincided with a strike in the steel and engineering sector, which ended last week.

The strike in the gold and coal sectors ended earlier this week. On Thursday Cosatu said the SA Transport & Allied Workers Union and six other unions had served employers in the cleaning sector with strike notices.

More than 100000 workers in the cleaning sector will embark on a national strike tomorrow.

The apparent co-ordinated effort is merely coincidental, Craven said.

But Levy said that when looking at wage negotiations and strikes so far this year, there was clearly a centralised and co-ordinated approach taken by Cosatu's affiliated unions to demand double-digit wage increases.

Most wage demands have started at 14% or 15% this year, with settlements between 7.5% and 10%, depending on workers' pay level.

A double-digit increase was the magic number that unions wanted to be able to show, Levy said. Also, strikes usually begot more strikes, he said.

The public outcry about strikes often included references to SA's high unemployment level, but Levy said a direct link between strikes and unemployment only existed in the popular mind.

According to Stats SA's latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey the official unemployment rate climbed to 25.7% last quarter.

To be counted as unemployed, a person must be looking for employment. According to Stats SA 45.5% of the population between the ages of 15 and 64 were classified as not economically employed and therefore not employed, and not looking for employment.

In its latest employment index report published last month, Adcorp said that to fix the unemployment problem in SA two essential areas of the Labour Relations Act - collective bargaining and protection against dismissal - should be revised.

"Dismissal protections - which make it exceedingly difficult to fire workers who fail to perform or even to show up for work - have made falling labour productivity an endemic rather than occasional or isolated problem," Adcorp said.

"The collective bargaining process - which gives significant power to trade unions and bargaining councils - has allowed double-digit wage escalations to co-exist with falling labour productivity.

"The inability to get workers to perform, and the inability to pay them for their performance, are the single biggest drivers of low employment, which in turn is the primary cause of high unemployment.

''As a result, big and small employers alike are considering how to mechanise, automate and generally do away with labour."

According to Loane Sharp, labour market analyst at Adcorp, there is a link between strikes and unemployment, but to some extent they are both symptomatic of the same thing: tough economic conditions.