South Africa’s 'oxymoronic' national stayaway has very little going for it

Oxymorons are now so much a part of our lives that we barely notice them. Think of “civil war” or “paper towel”, or “crash landing” or “deafening silence”. One you often see in the business press is “negative growth”, which is a polite way of saying that this is a positive shitstorm.

The same applies to phrases, like “fighting for peace”, although the phrase is so self-consciously oxymoronic that we do get the joke. Comedian George Carlin once famously said that “fighting for peace is like making love for virginity”.

To all of these, one must add something very specific to South Africa: “striking for jobs” – and this one is seriously not funny. It’s my unbiased opinion that striking for jobs is true fiction. Whenever the SA labour movement calls on the SA labour force to strike for jobs, I tend to let out a silent scream.

Tomorrow, the trade union movements have called for a day-long “general strike”, although, of course, this too is an oxymoron: it’s neither a strike and nor is it general. Participants are invariably those who have no real choice in the matter, because if transport routes break down, then the work stayaway works. 

One of the questions never really answered is, how much this costs society. Some estimates are provided sometimes, but I wonder about their veracity. So I thought, why not try to calculate it myself? How would one do that?

Actually, it’s not very difficult to at least get an “exact estimate”. There are two essential losses applicable here: the wages the workforce lose by not going to work – because now almost all employers impose a "no work, no pay" policy – and the lost corporate profits these stayaways engender. 

Let's take two companies you could say are proxies for the SA workforce – one representing higher-paid workers and one representing lower-paid workers: Standard Bank and Shoprite. You will see why in a bit.