Social Policies and Distributional Justice

Growing the economy and creating wealth are the basis of development, but not yet development itself. For turning economic progress into development, distribution matters. Firstly, wealth creation itself should already be as broad-based as possible through the support of a conducive policy framework. Secondly, in order to maximize the positive impact on people’s lives, further redistributive mechanisms and policies are needed.

Trade unions are there to see to it that workers are getting their fair share. In a caring society, social policies must be in place to protect vulnerable people like children, orphans, sick people, the old, people with disabilities, people living with HIV/Aids, etc.

As a legacy of its past, Namibia still has one of the most unequal income distributions in the world. The majority of her people continues to live in abject poverty, despite Namibia’s status of a lower middle income country. The situation is further exacerbated by the consequences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic with life expectancy strongly declining and the number of vulnerable people on the rise. Among the policies to address poverty, Namibia is running a non-contributary, government-funded social pension scheme that reaches out to all Namibians over 60 and arguably constitutes the most efficient and effective poverty alleviation tool in the country. Unemployment which stands at over 30% is also unacceptably high and growing. Together with new phenomena, like the casualisation of labour, this huge imbalance in the labour market is destroying some of the gains that the labour movement made in the recent past with regard to wages and working conditions. The advancement of formerly disadvantaged people into higher and better paid positions is making progress, but for a number of reasons not as quickly as politically desired, at least not in the private sector.

The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung has a tradition of organising public dialogue on labour and social policy issues, in conjunction with a variety of local partners (e.g. Ministry of Labour), that brings together different stakeholders. The idea is to have a critical look from various angles into the design and the implementation of social policies like labour law reforms, employment equity, or land reform, in order to figure out what the intended and unintended consequences of such policies are or are likely to be, whether such policies can serve their purported purpose, or, although well-intended, in the extreme do more harm than good. Sporadically, FES is commissioning policy research, to scientifically underpin policy debate. Currently, FES is supporting scientific research that accompanies the Basic Income Grant (BIG) pilot project.

FES is assisting the trade unions and its federation, the National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW) in dealing with issues of trade union strategy and trade union policy. In capitalist market economies the distributional interests of business are easily portrayed as coinciding with the common interest of the national economy. Thus, trade unions must rise to the challenge to present viable policy alternatives that combine workers’ protection and employment creation. With high formal unemployment and a shrinking membership base in their traditional sectors, trade unions also face the challenge to reach out to new groups of mainly vulnerable workers, like self-employed or own account workers in the informal economy, where the traditional trade union toolkit does not easily apply and different organising strategies are required. Support in these fields is organised in close co-operation with the Labour Resource and Research Institute (LaRRi) and by also tapping into the experience of regional and international trade union networks. Furthermore, FES is supporting the Namibian unions through a trade union capacity building programme. This training is mainly targeting officials and shopstewards of NUNW-affiliates. (Read more about Trade Unions in Namibia in the FES-Trade Union Country Report Namibia.)