The South African labour force is nowhere near as committed as their German and Chinese counterparts and this is an important factor in making the country more competitive in the international environment.

Zipp points out that when young Germans are interviewed for jobs, one of the first questions they ask is around retirement benefits - indicating their long-term commitment to the company that is hiring them.

Similarly his experience has been that in China, there's a well established ethic of working for the "next generation". In South Africa, however, the labour movement is given over to subversion as evidenced by the spate of strikes well before negotiation techniques were tapped out.

Speaking to ManufacturingHub.co.za, Zipp says: "South Africa needs to take an active decision to work hard". The alternative is that the manufacturing sector will continue to decline.

For those not familiar with the Henkel name, the Düsseldorf headquartered business is a manufacturer of a number of household names including adhesives such as Pritt and Pattex as well as local consumer brands such as Schwarzkopf hair products. The company is also active in the supply of products into the global automotive sector.

Zipp – who had extensive involvement in the establishment of the Henkel operations in China – sees many similarities between the two countries in terms of their development. He believes that if the South African government is serious about their intentions to stimulate manufacturing in the region, then a philosophy of entitlement must go.

“The hard-working German may be a cliché but maybe South Africa can learn something from this approach to work,” he said.

The German economy has been lauded by both local and international investment managers who have been critical of the P.I.G.S. (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) who have failed to continue to develop their manufacturing sectors. At a time when the Western car manufacturers are under threat from the East, Germany still has ability to be competitive in this sphere of manufacturing due to their focus on skills and efficiency.

As anecdotal evidence of the contrasting cultures between South Africans and their Chinese counterparts, Zipp points to a reading initiative that Henkel operates where the company will distribute books to underprivileged communities in an attempt to promote reading and basic literacy skills development. In China he says that when the company came back a few years later there was a measurable improvement in literacy levels whereas in South Africa the same could not be said.

Having been actively involved in the recent wage negotiations with labour unions and having interacted with his German counterparts, Zipp has been able to weigh up the local labour unions. Asked what differentiates the two well-organised forces, Zipp says that those who are leading and negotiating on behalf of the German labour market have a high degree of sophistication and have a keen understanding of what is happening in the global economic environment – something which he believes is lacking to some degree in the local market.

“In Germany there is far more of a ‘social partnership’ model between labour, business and government,” he said.

A key aspect that Zipp believes needs to be communicated clearly to the labor market is that many manufacturing plants are becoming increasingly more automated and mechanized to counter rising labour costs. This will increase demand for higher skilled people within industry.

From a skills perspective he cautions that South Africa also needs to be careful not to shut out international skills that could be injected by multi-national firms such as Henkel. The South African arm of the German chamber of commerce and industry is attempting to engage local business in the rolling out of vocational skills programs for local industry based on a program that was successful overseas.

Henkel has also seen an increase in the interest of European based professionals to look at employment opportunities in South Africa, but many have been held up by the red tape associated with issuing visas.

Zipp believes that if South Africa is prepared to develop its vocational skills base and allow for the input of foreign professionals into the local market then this will ultimately address the demand for skills in the industrial and manufacturing space.

“At the moment it is a case of either having no skills, or the wrong skills,” adding that there was a chronic shortage of mechanical and chemical engineers in South Africa with many being absorbed by the infrastructure projects on the go.

Concluding the interview, Zipp is surprisingly upbeat about the prospects for the South African manufacturing sector. He believes that the current global slowdown has given government an opportunity to address many of the inefficiencies such as logistics bottlenecks in the rail and port infrastructure as well as power supply shortages.

“The slowdown provides an opportunity to regroup and countries who address these bottlenecks will become more competitive,” he said.

 

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