DA’s plan for national minimum wage exemptions expose its class roots
9 April 2018
The Democratic Alliance exposed its true capitalist class character when its federal congress passed a resolution in favour of allowing employees to opt out of the national minimum wage (NMW), and allow them accept lesser salaries “if they so wish”.
The South African Federation of Trade Unions see this as he clearest reason why workers and poor South Africans should have no illusions that the DA will ever act in their interests. It is, always has been and always will be, a party of big business and the country’s privileged elite.
SAFTU has already condemned the poverty-level NMW of R3.50 an hour, as the legitimisation of the apartheid wage structure, which will perpetuate and widen what is already the world’s highest rate of inequality.
The DA however seems to believes that this poverty wage is much too high for some of its employer friends, and so want a Job Seeker’s Exemption Certificate (JSEC) to allow unemployed individuals the right to enter into employment contracts on their own terms, even if the contracts offer a wage less than R3 500.