Labour conflict and the persistence of macro underemployment in South Africa

Something must be structurally wrong in a labour market when a well developed economy like that of South Africa is not able to absorb and allocate an accumulating surplus of labour over a period of 20 years or longer but has instead moved to the use of more capital-intensive technology. The objectiv...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:South African journal of economic and management sciences 2010-09, Vol.13 (3), p.272-292
Main Authors: Schoeman, C.H., Botha, I., Blaauw, P.F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business
Business, Finance
Communication
E24
Economics
J51
J52
Management
Public Administration
University of Johannesburg
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Something must be structurally wrong in a labour market when a well developed economy like that of South Africa is not able to absorb and allocate an accumulating surplus of labour over a period of 20 years or longer but has instead moved to the use of more capital-intensive technology. The objective of this paper is to analyse the role labour conflict plays in the persistence of macro underemployment in South Africa. For the analysis two models identified from the literature were used. In these models labour conflict originates from an over-regulated labour market where labour appropriates capital and bad or hostile labour relations. In both models the switch to technology leads to underemployment. It was found that bad labour relations contribute to the persistence of underemployment in South Africa.
ISSN:1015-8812
2222-3436
2222-3436
DOI:10.4102/sajems.v13i3.23