Differentiation within the South African clothing industry: implications for wage setting and employment
| dc.contributor.author | Nattrass, Nicoli | |
| dc.contributor.author | Seekings, Jeremy | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2016-04-28T08:29:19Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2016-04-28T08:29:19Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2012 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2016-04-28T08:28:05Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | The South African clothing industry is the most labour-intensive segment of South Africa?s manufacturing industry, but it is far from monolithic, encompassing a set of different sub-sectors with different market niches andproduction technologies. These encompass a higher-wage, less labour-intensive, mostly metro-based sector producing relatively high value-addedtop quality garments for upper income niche markets; and a lower-wage, morelabour-intensive sector, mostly in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of the Free State,producing standardised basic clothing items for middle- and low-incomeconsumers in a highly competitive international market. The more labour-intensive bottom end of the industry has been competing successfully againstimports from low-wage countries - thus confounding the prevalent policyview that South Africa simply cannot compete with China - but it does soonly by paying wages below the legal minima. The different segments of theclothing industry co-exist at different wage rates (i.e. there has been no single "race to the bottom?) because they cater to different product markets. Forcingall producers to pay the bargained minimum wage will result in the migrationof low-wage jobs from South Africa to China, Lesotho and other lower-wageareas, without any gain to producers or workers in other parts of the SouthAfrican clothing industry, or to South African consumers. | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.apacitation | Nattrass, N., & Seekings, J. (2012). <i>Differentiation within the South African clothing industry: implications for wage setting and employment</i> University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Centre for Social Science Research(CSSR). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/19262 | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.chicagocitation | Nattrass, Nicoli, and Jeremy Seekings <i>Differentiation within the South African clothing industry: implications for wage setting and employment.</i> University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Centre for Social Science Research(CSSR), 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/19262 | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.citation | Nattrass, N., & Seekings, J. (2012). Differentiation within the South African clothing industry: implications for wage setting and employment. Centre for Social Science Research: University of Cape Town. | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.ris | TY - Working Paper AU - Nattrass, Nicoli AU - Seekings, Jeremy AB - The South African clothing industry is the most labour-intensive segment of South Africa?s manufacturing industry, but it is far from monolithic, encompassing a set of different sub-sectors with different market niches andproduction technologies. These encompass a higher-wage, less labour-intensive, mostly metro-based sector producing relatively high value-addedtop quality garments for upper income niche markets; and a lower-wage, morelabour-intensive sector, mostly in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of the Free State,producing standardised basic clothing items for middle- and low-incomeconsumers in a highly competitive international market. The more labour-intensive bottom end of the industry has been competing successfully againstimports from low-wage countries - thus confounding the prevalent policyview that South Africa simply cannot compete with China - but it does soonly by paying wages below the legal minima. The different segments of theclothing industry co-exist at different wage rates (i.e. there has been no single "race to the bottom?) because they cater to different product markets. Forcingall producers to pay the bargained minimum wage will result in the migrationof low-wage jobs from South Africa to China, Lesotho and other lower-wageareas, without any gain to producers or workers in other parts of the SouthAfrican clothing industry, or to South African consumers. DA - 2012 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2012 T1 - Differentiation within the South African clothing industry: implications for wage setting and employment TI - Differentiation within the South African clothing industry: implications for wage setting and employment UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/19262 ER - | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/19262 | |
| dc.identifier.vancouvercitation | Nattrass N, Seekings J. Differentiation within the South African clothing industry: implications for wage setting and employment. 2012 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/19262 | en_ZA |
| dc.language | eng | en_ZA |
| dc.publisher.department | Centre for Social Science Research(CSSR) | en_ZA |
| dc.publisher.faculty | Faculty of Humanities | en_ZA |
| dc.publisher.institution | University of Cape Town | |
| dc.rights | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) | |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ | |
| dc.title | Differentiation within the South African clothing industry: implications for wage setting and employment | en_ZA |
| dc.type | Working Paper | en_ZA |
| uct.type.filetype | Text | |
| uct.type.filetype | Image | |
| uct.type.publication | Research | en_ZA |
| uct.type.resource | Research paper | en_ZA |