5 February 2025
2pm

Forty social movements, worker formations and community organisations condemn the tiny R1.44 per hour increase to the National Minimum Wage

For interviews, please phone:
Nandi Vanqa-Mgijima – Southern African Regional Network – 065 848 3196
Maggie Mthombeni – IZWI Domestic Workers Alliance – 073 153 1167

The Campaign to Scrap the Labour Amendment Bills, made up of 40 social movements, worker formations and community organisations, condemns the tiny increase to the National Minimum Wage of inflation plus 1.5%. This deepened attack on minimum wage workers, such as casual workers, raises the NMW from R28,79 per hour by just R1.44 to R30.23 per hour from 1 March 2026. EPWP workers will now earn just R16.62 per hour.

This is a pathetically low increase to a pathetically low wage. The reason is clear: the national minimum wage is further entrenching the system of cheap Black labour that South African capitalism rests on. It was never intended to challenge that system.

Most affected workers are simply not being paid even this low wage. In its report and recommendations for 2026, the National Minimum Wage Commission reports that employer non-compliance is at the highest level since the 2019 introduction of the national minimum wage. Workers are not getting even the low minimum wage because there is no enforcement by the Department of Employment and Labour and the trade unions have made no effort to use the new minimum wage to organise the mostly non-unionised workers most affected.

Instead of fighting against the low minimum, unions like Cosatu make ridiculous claims about the NMW being a victory while others make muscular statements that temporarily interrupt their death rattle. Instead of addressing non-compliance, the NMWC claims that the country’s 1736 labour department inspectors are sufficient to do the job, which calls into question why the labour minister commits to employing an additional 20 000 inspectors.

The low, unenforced national minimum wage also drags down the wages of workers already earning above it. The contract cleaning and wholesale and retail sectoral determinations reflect this, as do even some bargaining councils like furniture, where unions are fully complicit in dragging down wages. Labour broker workers earning above the national minimum routinely find their wages reduced to the minimum when client companies contract new labour brokers. The low national minimum wage is not lifting 5-odd million workers out of poverty: instead, it is dragging more workers into poverty. This is being done with the full collaboration of a labour movement which is merely an extension of bosses’ interests into the working class.

Despite the 2018 hoopla around a R3500 monthly minimum wage, there is no monthly minimum wage in the National Minimum Wage Act. There is only an hourly rate.

The NMW Commission purposely avoids setting a monthly minimum but pretends it does not know that there are hundreds of thousands of workers in South Africa who work for labour brokers or on short-term contracts, and may only get three hours work a week or two days per month. There is absolutely nothing that workers can buy with an extra R1.44 per hour under the reality of short-term, low hours, casual contracts.

The Campaign will embark on a programme of awareness raising to inform workers of the new NMW, as part of the struggle to force the bosses to comply with this new rate, whilst at the same time continuing to fight for a living wage.

The Campaign to Scrap the Labour Amendment Bills demands:

• The National Minimum Wage must be changed to a monthly wage, paid for 40 hours per week work, 22 days per month.
• This monthly wage must be a living wage of R12 000 per month minimum.
• Permanent jobs for all.
• A living UIF for all.
• National Minimum Wage Commission to convene public hearings to inform future reports and recommendations.
• Future NMWC reports must include detailed compliance information from the DEL and the CCMA, including levels of non-compliance and the number of compliance orders issued.

For interviews, please phone:
Nandi Vanqa-Mgijima – Southern African Regional Network – 065 848 3196
Maggie Mthombeni – IZWI Domestic Workers Alliance – 073 153 1167