Views on the Budget speech 2010

I would like to go on a relatively long quotation. The reason for this is that it offers a glimmer of hope to the business community who were beginning to doubt what they are regarded as in the recent pronouncements by some politicians.
Some of us have long argued that business, government, labour and civil society is connected by an umbilical cord. Any attempt to cut out any of these without proper surgery, all the quadruplates will die!
The Mail & Guardian, February 19 to 25 2010, vol 26 No7 and on page 2, referring to Minister Pravin Gordham when he delivered the budget speech,
“ … and he ended his speech with a call to government, the private sector and organized labour to forge a new social compact in terms of which government would provide the policy frameworks and socioeconomic conditions to accelerate job creation while business should balance the pursuit of profit with social justice”.
Organised labour, he suggested, must look beyond its existing constituency-with formal sector jobs-to “embrace and act on behalf of all our country’s workers, both those employed and those desperate for employment”.
The key observations I would like to make are:
(a) With due respect Minister, what you are calling for is not “a new social compact”. It is a relationship in the eyes of the private sector that has always been there. The only problem is that the private sector in the recent past has almost believed that the other parties have suspended this compact.
(b) The private sector must take heed of the call to “balance the pursuit of profit for social justice”. It is not a new call but the private sector has sometimes treated the issue of social justice as a peripheral.
(c) This relationship needs to be taken seriously as a relationship in the workplace and not only in the formal structures like NEDLAC.
In the last blog I placed, I indicated that there are 20 young people whose careers I want to follow. I will be challenging them to provide their views specifically on the issues of whether they think it is necessary for the private sector to balance the pursuit of profit with social justice and whether they are prepared to take less profits if that is done to pursue social justice. I would like to know further how they see this balance could be done.

Let me conclude by also leaving one matter hanging, coming also from the same budget speech, and this relates to the relaxation of labour legislation for workers aged between 18 and 25 and state subsidies to reduce the cost of employing them. A lot of attention needs to be given to this considering the effect it will have on the overall employment rate in this country.