NALSU NEWS: Labour Studies podcast/video: Professor Frederick Fourie | "The South African Informal Sector: Creating Jobs, Reducing Poverty"
TOPIC: The informal sector is South Africa's "forgotten" sector in many ways, yet it provides livelihoods, employment and income for about 2.5 million business owners and workers. One in every six South Africans who work, work in the informal sector. Almost half of these work in firms with waged employees, with around 850,000 paid jobs in the sector -- twice the employment in mining. The annual entry of new enterprises is high, as is the number of enterprises that grow their employment. There is no shortage of business initiative and desire to grow.
This seminar draws on an important collection of research, edited by Professor Fourie, in order to shed light on the sector and consider the policy implications. "The South African Informal Sector: Creating Jobs, Reducing Poverty" is an open access book by the HSRC (link below) that provides unmatched evidence- and data-driven analyses, with substantial quantitative contributions combined with qualitative findings, and utilises several disciplinary perspectives.
Professor Fourie argues that recognising the informal sector as an integral part of the economy is a crucial first step towards instituting a "smart policy" approach. It is essential to have well-designed measures that enable and support the sector, rather than suppress it, and that address the obstacles and constraints that foster hardship and failure.
DETAILS: This is a recording of a live event in the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) Labour Studies Seminar Series, held on Wednesday, 5 September 2018, at Eden Grove, Seminar Room 2, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa.
YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/NolRyHDSfVU
PODCAST: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nalsu
SPEAKER: Prof Frederick Fourie has a PhD in Economics from Harvard University and has focused on unemployment, and competition policy. In the latter capacity, he was instrumental in the drafting of the Competition Act, and a member of the first Competition Tribunal. He is author of a widely-used South African macroeconomics textbook, now in its fourth edition. A former Distinguished Professor of Economics, he is a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State and a research affiliate at the University of Cape Town.
HOSTS: The Labour Studies Seminar Series is run by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) in partnership with the Departments of Sociology & Industrial Sociology, and Economics & Economic History, Rhodes University.
ABOUT NALSU: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, NALSU is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team, including from the disciplines of Sociology and Economics, NALSU has a democratic, nonâsectarian, non-aligned and pluralist practice, and active relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. We draw strength from our location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and post-apartheid contradictions, are keenly felt. NALSU is named in honour of Neil Hudson Aggett, union organiser and medical doctor who died in an apartheid jail in 1982 following brutality and torture.