In a speech last week our Finance Minister Tito Mboweni criticized local businesses for their high employment of foreign nationals in our country, Malawians and Zimbabweans in particular, and singled out the Restaurant industry in particular. In his address to the nation on Saturday, Minister of Industry and Trade Ebrahim Patel encouraged South Africans to Buy Local rather than imported goods, making absolute sense in both instances, in that our crippled economy needs our monetary reserves to stay in our country, and to be spent locally.

Fin24 reported as follows about the Minister’s views on this matter, not yet a mandate as far as I understand: ‘Mboweni says when he returned to SA from exile in 1990, 8 out of 10 workers at restaurants were South African. 

Today almost 100% are non-South African, he says.  

He said the “new economy” post-lockdown must “answer that question”, adding establishments must have new labour market policies in place when the economy reopens. 

“The proportion of South Africans working in a restaurant must be greater than that of non-South Africans,” he says, adding that there must not be discrimination against non-South Africans’. 

The last part of the last sentence sounds contradictory. I am following a What’s App group of restaurateurs, and a quick informal poll of the restaurants represented showed that the majority of the restaurants employ local staff, but all also employ foreigners. I have seen a guideline of 60% local and 40% foreigner staff suggested, which the group response showed was what they were collectively reflecting, showing that the Minister’s statistics may be incorrect. Given that staff need to be retrenched in some restaurants, the question was asked whether the foreigners should be retrenched first. The group consensus was that LIFO (Last In First Out) was the only fair way to do this.

Interesting is that UIF payments for South African employees with a local ID number have been received in part by a number of restaurants, but not yet for their foreign staff, despite them paying UIF too.

Any employer will concur that our foreign employees are far harder working than their local colleagues, having a far better work ethic.

 

it will be interesting to see how this develops, and whether it will be legislated once our economy returns to normal free the Lockdown.

 

Chris von Ulmenstein, WhaleTales Blog: www.chrisvonulmenstein.com/blog Tel +27 082 55 11 323 Twitter:@Ulmenstein Facebook: Chris von Ulmenstein Instagram: @Chrissy_Ulmenstein