2016 may well be the year that South Africa gets its act together and formalises a national minimum wage across each different sector, with petrol attendants falling under the service industry.

In essence that means they use tips to supplement their meagre salaries, something to bear in mind next time you hand over a R2 coin to someone who has just pumped R600 into your car.

BusinessTech have looked into these earnings, speaking to the Fuel Retailer’s Association, and had this to say about the almost 70 000 attendants employed across the country:

Previous reports on petrol attendants stated that most are young men, with an average age of 27. More than half had worked in the same position for in excess of five years, while individual salaries can reach R9,000 per month, depending on which company they work for.

According to the wage schedule for the motor industry, petrol attendants’ minimum wage is set at R22.75 per hour, or R1,024 per week (roughly R4,100 a month).

These wages have been set to August 2016.

Don’t let the R9 000 per month fool you, that’s the upper echelons of what you can end up earning. Some more stats to shed light on that and salaries in other sectors:

The average minimum wage is a monthly sum of R2,731.74 across all the private-sector bargaining councils; and in the region of R2,362.36 across all the sectoral determinations.

Union Cosatu has called for a national minimum wage of between R4,500 and R6,000 to be set for workers in South Africa. This echoes the call from the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) to establish a national minimum wage of R4,500 in 2016.

I think we can all agree that a national minimum wage can only be a good thing, although it does need to be managed in such a way that it doesn’t backfire and cause job loss in areas where small enterprises can no longer employ as many staff.

Hey, at least it’s not a Marie Claire internship right?

[source:businesstech]