A significant number of South African companies are still not paying minimum wage to their workers, despite mandatory changes and increases over the past year, says employment and labour minister Thulas Nxesi.
Responding in a recent written parliamentary Q&A, Nxesi noted that the legislated national minimum wage (NMW) is not R3,500 per month as is widely reported, but R23.19 per hour payable for the numbers of ordinary hours worked.
“The latest quantitative research shows that the average level of NMW non-compliance in Q1 2020, before the NMW was adjusted, was 35.8%, meaning that approximately 36% of all workers were paid below the NMW.
“A year later, in Q1 2021, this number remained much the same, at 36.2%. In 2020, the NMW was adjusted by 3.8%, and wages appeared to have risen by roughly this amount for those who remained employed in Q1 2021, meaning that the overall rate of non-compliance remained stable.
However, the researchers found that the depth of violation did fall over the period, suggesting that for those workers earning below the national minimum wage, wages increased in real terms, but not all the way up to the full amount, Nxesi said.
“The research report further shows that across industry categories there was a substantial variation in rates of NMW violation. Agriculture had the largest proportion of sub-NMW earners, and this appears to have increased over the period.
“Construction, Wholesale and Retail Trade, and Domestic Work, all had rates of...
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