Workers hope bill will stop poor pay as mine bosses earn big

Mineworker Gubha* has been working at a Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed mining company for almost 10 years and takes home R7,000 a month.

The single father of one, who stays with his mother, uses his income to buy groceries and pay for his son's school fees.

The draft Companies Amendment Bill 2021 which wants to allow the disclosure of salaries of company bosses against those of lowest paid employees is causing tensions between labour and established business and giving company bosses sleepless nights.

Labour unions are cheering on the bill which is out for public comment for 30 days and hope it will help address income inequality and low wages those in a similar situation to Gubha are getting.

“My salary usually runs out after a week, and there are times I have to rely on loan sharks. My colleagues and I often discuss how broke we often are despite us having to work back-breaking overtime,” said Gubha, who spoke to Sowetan on condition of anonymity as it is against his company policy to speak to the media.

He said there are times when they work from 4am and knock off at 10pm. If they do long shifts, they get an average production bonus of R8,000 a month. Gubha is a member of the National Union of Mineworkers.

“The highest salary I have ever earned was R27,000 [which included overtime and production bonuses]. That was six years ago,” he said.

Gubha said he was saddened to hear that his shaft made a profit of almost R500m but he only received a bonus of R1,000.

The chief executive of Gubha's company in the previous financial year earned R25m in total remuneration.

The high income disparities between the lowest paid employees and their bosses led to the government recently proposing a law to address the issue.

The bill requires listed companies to disclose in annual reports the income of the top 5% highest paid employees while also revealing the income of the lowest paid 5% of employees. “Furthermore, it requires that companies disclose the average remuneration of all employees..." reads the amendment bill.

SA, according to the World Bank, is regarded as having the highest income inequality in the world.

Labour federation Cosatu said it “encouraged government to further strengthen [the bill] and table it in parliament as soon as possible”.

Cosatu said its support was premised upon the bill's clauses requiring large companies to publish their wage gaps. 

“This is a critical step towards addressing SA’s massive and unsustainable wage gap where CEOs earn millions and workers are paid slave wages,” said Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla.

He said the bill's clause that requires companies to share financial information would help support labour market stability where workers have a full understanding of their companies' finances.

While the Black Management Forum and Black Business Council told Sowetan they were yet to formulate an opinion, their established counterparts bashed the bill.

Business Unity SA's chief executive Cas Coovadia said they don't support automatic disclosure of the highest and lowest paid employees.

Coovadia said he believed the proposal was intended to spark a debate on income inequalities in SA.

He said Busa would support a debate on how to bridge income inequality gap in SA. Writing on SowetanLIVE's sister publication Business column, Leadership SA chief executive Busi Mavuso said: “We are not sure what constructive purpose disclosing the income ratio would serve as the information is already publicly available to anyone who wants to collate it.

“Remuneration of executives at listed companies already has to be disclosed, while information on the lowest paid wages is readily available from unions, for example,” she said.  

Furthermore, limiting this to public companies means we still will not get a clear picture of income inequality countrywide as there are only about 330 listed companies.

National Union of Mineworkers spokesperson Livhuwani Mammburu said the changes would be welcomed “especially in mining where workers are being ripped off daily”.

Gubha is one of thousands of lowly paid workers in the mining industry the labour union believes could benefit from the bill.

* not his real name.