The Pikitup
Strike: Can we afford to throw it away?
The Pikitup* strike that endured for 5 weeks annoyed me. It
annoyed me due to the fact that a lot of people were simply refusing to do
their work. It annoyed me because the world I lived in started looking like a
trash can. Moreover it annoyed me because others tried to extract a quick profit
through adhoc bin emptying (going rate R50+ per bin). And it also annoyed me
because many of these nascent entrepreneurs dumped their loads in common spaces.
Or so it seemed.
What was the strike about? A monthly salary of R10 000
was needed to replace a current salary of R6000 a month. That is what the
workers demanded. The tax tables indicate that with taxes and rebates, a R6000 monthly
salary might translate into a R5875 (excluding other deductions for medical,
housing, etc). But the demand, unreasonable as it was, asked for R10 000
which after tax alone would net about R9100. So that’s it. R9100 (or less) to
take my trash away. A payment of R300 a
day for a person working long hours, probably supporting more than him or
herself. And so it dawned on me. The problem was neither the strikers nor their
demands. The problem was affordability.
A quick glance at UK refuse collector pay scales showed that
their salaries, in this hallowed hard currency empire, were around a Rand
equivalent of R25000p/m or much more. So
our strikers were striking for less than half what their compatriots earned
elsewhere. Yes, that’s about it.
In short, the answer is simple. If we cannot afford to pay
those that remove our effluent from our doorstep at least R300 a day or a lot
more, then we should do it ourselves. That to me is a no brainer. Put simply “Can
we afford to throw it away?”
After looking at the issues my feeling was that the Pikitup strikers
were justified. The problem lies not with culture, work ethic, and education.
The problem is simply one of affordability. We need to pay more to discard what
we do.
And this is where the argument gets really interesting
because I have not touched on the social and environmental costs of what we
discard. Think about a plastic bucket, as an example… a bucket that you may buy
for R35. After a year it breaks and you throw it away. This bucket will continue
to degrade and poison the earth through the release of phthalates, bisphenol A,
and other poisons for about 500 or even 1000 years. It will wreak damage to the
environment including soil cultures, water runoff and subterranean water reserves
that we cannot undo, certainly not at an initial cost of R35.
The initial cost of the bucket soon pales into
insignificance in the face of the on-going environmental costs that will be
borne by other generations in time. Yet increasingly the future generation is
the one you’re in. It’s happening now because of what your parents did and
because of what you did not long ago.
The truth is we cannot
afford the enduring environmental cost of discarding that bucket. And we can’t even pay a living wage to those
charged with removing it from our doorstep.
The problem, dear reader, lies not with Pikitup nor the demands
of their employees. The problem lies with us, our excessive consumption, and
our faux belief in our incontrovertible authority over the natural world we live
in.
*Pikitup: the local refuse removal company.
