In the course of my 'day job' as an industrial relations consultant I get increasing queries from distraught employers of small and medium-sized businesses who simply do not know what to do as the country goes out of lockdown.
As I am simultaneously the chair of a human rights NGO I am forced to acknowledge the interlocking of the two disciplines, and ask myself the question, 'Should the right to gainful employment not be acknowledged as a basic human right?'
An adult should be able to support him or herself, their dependants, who may include children, parents or grandparents and those in the bloodline who are disabled. That is what being mature means. To be able to accept this usually requires that, outside of inherited resources, an adult must be able to work. And that should be a human right as well as an obligation.
Our constitution declares that everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, religion sex or, most notably at a time of refugees, origin, has certain rights. Section four lists 11 of them.
The right to gainful employment is not one of them.
As organisations have finally been allowed to reopen, a genuine conflict has resulted. People want to return to work. Employers want to go back to pre-lockdown status.
But one after the other are unable to do so, an eventuality not, apparently, foreseen by those who ordered the lockdown. Customers deprived of income themselves are not buying. Savings have run out, if they ever existed, as after the bank crisis of 2008-2009 and the subsequent recession of 2016-2019, most people and most SMEs survive from month to month. Those small contractors not already bankrupted by government's failure to pay for work previously done are not getting new contracts. Foreign used vehicles are piling up on the waterfront as new buyers cannot afford them.
It is a myth that every employer has pots and pots of money earned by exploiting their workers put aside in the bank, so that when pandemics shut down the economy, employers can be ordered by a government to dig up the pots and pay rent, electricity, water rates, insurance, maintenance, internet, telephone and wages. To say nothing of taxes, back VAT rates, NIS contributions, health surcharge, Green Fund levy and transport for goods and services that must be provided to keep the organisation going. This does not include bank charges, interest on loans taken out and contributions to pension and health schemes.
Trade unions know all this because they, too, are employers and have rent to pay, or, if they own their own buildings, maintenance. They have computers and must pay internet charges, electricity, water rates, telephone, cell phone charges and transport allowances for travelling officers which include the price of fuel, which has risen three times in the past year. Their members pay the hefty executive salaries of the union president and wages of support staff out of monthly dues which have probably not increased.
As ILO research stats have shown,
