Having spent a lot of time in seeing how other countries and successful countries work, I often think about our labour laws.  Big foreign companies stopped investing in South Africa years ago and in a more frightening way many of the companies we consider South African are not really truly considered South African by people in other countries.  De Beer’s, Anglo American and SAB all have their head office in London.  Yes, they are listed on Johannesburg Stock Exchange also with a secondary listing and yes, they make most of their money in South Africa, but effectively they are British companies and they form part of the top 100 companies on the FTSE – the British Stock Exchange.  We are still proud of them, but they are not actually South African from an international perspective at all – they are British.  

I don’t think most Americans, who have heard of SAB, would ever have any idea that the SA stands for South Africa!  The company is known as SAB and people don’t know it as South African Breweries and would be stunned to discover that a company that started in South Africa is such a major player all over the world owning major beer brands in numerous countries and not just the brands that are sold in South Africa.

In any event, I digress.  I was having a conversation with one of my staff members recently who was explaining to me that she cannot help it that she is one of the staff who is sick the most often in the office and she basically referred to her 30 day sick leave, over a three year period, as an amount of leave she is “entitled to take”.  In other words, she thinks it is normal to take 30 days sick leave over three years and to space it out nicely, as opposed to only taking sick leave when you are actually sick!  Naturally people, who on the one hand criticise the ANC and their policies all the time, need to understand they are in fact embracing ANC policy.  A policy that has not worked for the economy, a policy that frightens foreign companies away, but the truth is most people who have jobs are quite happy to embrace ANC policy when it suits them.  At that point they don’t care that it helps cause a high unemployment rate, the poverty we have which indirectly affects the crime, etc.  It does not mean anything to them and every time I write a blog like this I get somebody who has to criticise me – although if the people who wrote those comments read business newspapers they would read the same thoughts and criticisms I have, on a regular basis.  Anyway, our economy is floundering and our labour laws are ridiculous.  I do think that employees need more protection than employers.  Employers at least, when things go right, make more money and that is why, when things go wrong, they are expected to take the loss themselves and suffer alone.   Employees simply move on to other jobs at other companies and the person who risked his or her capital invariably goes bankrupt, has their house sold and their kids moved out of the private school, etc.  That is business and that is a risk reward ratio that is involved in owning a business.   More to come in my next blog….