[Debate] Expert throws down the job gauntlet

Tue May 26 14:11:06 BST 2009

[image: WeekendPost]

Expert throws down the job gauntlet

*Bob Kernohan, Business Editor, Weekend Post, Port Elizabeth, 12 May 2009*

A TOP academic issued a challenge during a visit to Mandela Bay this week
for the newly elected government to consider establishing a programme of
providing “decent work for all” as a cornerstone of its policy.

Prof Edward Webster, of Wits University‘s Society, Work and Development
Institute, said budgeting for such a programme at a cost of R50 per employee
for each day worked, would provide a greater income than the basic welfare
grant being suggested.

It would also pay off in a number of other areas, ranging from workers
regaining their self-esteem to their not having to turn to crime to feed
their families.

Webster was delivering a key public lecture at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan
University on the current global crisis.

In the case of South Africa, he said, renewed capital inflows were
strengthening the rand at present, but the decline in output and job losses
was continuing. “We are not likely to see a recovery in the real economy –
that is employment – until 2010 at the earliest,” Webster predicted.

In the meantime, unemployment would harm not only individuals, but also
households and communities.

It also had to borne in mind that while economic multipliers were usually
the focus of job creation, there were also social multipliers. These
included decreased crime, enhanced family and community cohesion,
strengthened security, better education, healthcare and childcare.

To create the jobs needed in South Africa, said Webster, who is a graduate
of Rhodes University, the country could not expect only a market economy to
provide jobs for all those who wanted to work. An “imaginative” alternative
had to be created.

“This must involve a central role for the development finance institutions
we have inherited from the apartheid state – the Development Bank of
Southern Africa, the Land Bank, and the Industrial Development Corporation.”
He urged that these “become the engine of our public infrastructure
developmental strategy and must include re-introducing forms of capital
control”.

“Such a strategy must involve reviving the credit system and providing
targeted support to sustainable enterprises, especially micro, small and
medium- sized enterprises.”

Overall, argued Webster, the “central way in which to boost the economy is
through employment-oriented interventions”. He challenged the government to
act on that.

It should become the “employer of last resort”, meaning that if no other job
was available a person would be employed by the state.

Webster used as an example a scheme in India, called the national rural
employment guarantee, which entitled every rural household to 100 days of
work per year.

“The budget for this imaginative guarantee of employment in 2006-2007 was
0,33 per cent of gross domestic product,” he said, adding that similarly “my
hunch is that we could also afford to guarantee employment for all (in South
Africa)”.

Such a programme, run for perhaps 50 years, said Webster, would also divert
some of the short-term focus on continuing concerns about levels of skills
and enable these to grow over the time period.

*From: http://www.weekendpost.co.za/business/article.aspx?id=420282*

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