Strike Out!

It's great to have our collegues from the Metalworkers' Union back at work!

Disruptive though it may seem, I'm fully behind them in their quest for a living wage. While Business loves to talk percentages, the talkers amongst the business hierarchies are not the ones who stand in the lines at supermarkets wondering what 7% or 8% difference is going to make to the contents of their trolleys. Top management who get 7% or 8% on their salaries see significant thousands added to their paychecks, but at the average wage-earner's level....well Eskom has eaten up that little bit of cash in their latest abominable electricity increase, without it ever getting to any supermarket trolly.

What bites my rear-end even more is that, while wage-earners hope for a bonus at year-end or holiday time, the fat-cats at the top of the food chain reap all sorts of other bonuses as well. They are well rewarded in an extensive array of opportunities over and above pay increases.

In my opinion, the discrepancy in earnings between workers and upper management is downright immoral. The problem in our economy is not that the workers want too much, it's that top management earn obscene amounts of money by comparison and they would rather destroy people, families and the economy than earn a little less so that others can also live. In many cases, those top earners are not even competant at what they do.

Percentage increases should be higher at the lower income levels and decrease further up the ladder. Top management have more than enough perks, bonuses and expense accounts to ensure that their comfort zones are never short of luxurious. The lifestyles of the upper, the trendy, the wealthy in our society is actually quite obscene in the face of the suffering of most of our people.

Mandela had a vision. The people who could live that vision echo the words, but are blinded by greed. They should be ashamed to even live in his shadow, not pay lip service to his vision and steal his light as if they actually deserve to be a part of it.