Sonja Vorster
A sense of despondency has entered into many households, small, medium and large businesses. As soon as a person irrespective of status looks at a newspaper, social media, and television or just simply listens to chatter around you, it is very seldom that good news is heard.
Strikes for higher service delivery to higher wages; strikes that leaves the health services and patients in dire conditions or school children just before final exams without educators; everyone has a demand!
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None of the demands if one carefully looks at the demand is unreasonable but many of the demands are unattainable in the current economical state our country is in, and that is the problem.
Employers on the other hand would want to have happy and well paid staff but simply are barely keeping their doors open. They are unhappy as they are forced to pay more for less productivity, more and more restrictive labour and tax legislation.
And on the other side of the coin is battling to get clients to pay for services. Many employers cannot increase normal prices yearly as it would throw them out of being lucrative and attractive for customers to buy their products or use their services.
The workers are having difficulty just like the employer paying for basic services. Travelling costs that are sky rocketing. South Africa has never had these types of fuel prices, which are topped up with toll fees, food prices increases, Vat increase and so many more aspects.
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The basics needs such as affordable schooling is almost out of reach for many parents and lo and behold if a worker gets sick and has to rely on the government health care facilities.
What workers and employers needs to understand is that every single one of them is feeling the same stress but within their own framework of existence. Everyone from the boss to the cleaner is dealing with bills that are difficult to pay and long hours at work.
When your ATTITUDE becomes clouded with fear, anger, exhaustion, feelings of being treated unfairly and this applies to both workers and employers, you will have difficulty in seeing new opportunities around you. You become numb.
You battle to even see a solution when it is right in front of you. And when you are in this frame of mind, your ALTITUDE becomes low and nothing can grow or improve.
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When you have a good long hard look at yourself and get your ATTITUDE in a more positive frame of mind, seeking solutions, finding solutions, asking for help, when help is not forthcoming helping yourself to get out of your current downward spiral, you will find that your ALTITUDE suddenly has a miraculous change.
Suddenly you are surrounded with opportunities; a will to get up in the morning and get going. When I look back at history, I cannot help to think back at how countries that were virtually razed to the ground in World War 2, stood up from nothing, no buildings, everything destroyed and people were surrounded by hunger, poverty, no housing, injured men with no spirit left in them returning from war.
But somehow when you could not see where a shimmer of light could have been possible, people rose up and lived.
If each company’s employees and employers come together and decide “we are going to make this work, we are going to build this company up together and then we will all benefit at the end of the day” our ALTITUDES would be looking so much better than it is now.
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