Introduction A crucial moment in South Africa’s transition to democracy was the signing of the Laboria Minute in 1990 between unions, employers and government where it was agreed that no laws on labour market issues would be passed without the agreement of all three social partners. This led to the establishment of the National Economic Forum (NEF) in 1992 and its merging with the National Manpower Commission (NMC) to create South Africa’s premier social dialogue institution, the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC). In many ways the Laboria Minute was to pre-figure the political negotiations that led to South Africa’s first democratic elections in April 1994.
NEDLAC is distinctive as a peak-level social dialogue institution in that it includes not just labour market issues but also trade and industrial policy, monetary and fiscal policy as well as developmental issues. The traditional tripartite structure was also broadened to include community organisations.
In 2013 the authors were appointed to undertake an External Review to recommend ways of repositioning NEDLAC. We interviewed representatives from all four of the constituencies and wrote up a report. Subsequently we presented the report separately to all four constituencies and then incorporated their feedback into the review again before finalising our recommendations.
Wage labour played and continues to play a central role in Western industrial societies, not just on the economic plane but above all as a vital support for social cohesion and the rule of law. The main advances of the last 200 years including the building of the welfare state and its important gains in the field of human rights (e.g. dignified work and social rights) are examples of the importance of struggles waged by organised wage labour. The major problem, however, is the imminent civilisational regression in which we find ourselves, teetering on the brink of a new cycle of mercantilist barbarism similar to the times of Marx (Estanque and Costa, 2013). In fact, the Portuguese labour context has in recent years been battered by austerity policies, formally with the entry of the Troika (International Monetary Fund (IMF)/ European Central Bank (ECB)/ European Commission(EC0) in May 2011 and even beyond its exit n May 2014.
In this text, we initially identify some internal challenges put before unions and the external threats underlying austerity policies. We also set out some tasks for trade unions.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) Global Wage Report[1], a publication released every two years, has been issued on the 5th of December 2014. The report is titled “Wages and income inequality” and, as usual, it has three parts. The first part analyses the evolution of real wages around the world. The second part, examines the link between wages and household income inequality, and also looks at wage gaps between certain groups: women and men; migrants and nationals; workers in the formal and the informal economy. The last part challenges the reader on what could be appropriate policy responses. The purpose of this column is to therefore highlight and discuss some of the crucial findings of the report.
Wage trends: Flat wages in developed economies, growing wages in emerging economies The most recent global wage growth was driven almost entirely by emerging and developing economies, where real wages have been rising – sometimes rapidly – since 2007. Before the financial crisis, real average wages in developed economies grew by an average of about 1 per cent per year, and global wage growth was about 3 per cent. Such figures have since changed in recent years; wage growth in developed economies almost stands at zero, and global wages are growing by 2 per cent. If you take China out of the equation, the global wage growth is quite simply cut in half (see Figure 1).
Introduction
