Our Three Streams of Work

Our work as a movement is divided into three streams: connecting the unemployed to existing jobs, job creation and movement building.

Stream 1: Existing Jobs

Unemployed volunteers assist the public in making good CVs, training on sending their CV to out directly to a large number of employers and on dealing with hard interview situations.

Stream 2: Job Creation

Our efforts in this area have started with informal work. We are embarking on a pilot to promote informal work which involves two key elements.

The first is a cash back scheme through the use of mobile money. The second element involves member-based organisations (MBOs) per category of trade. These MBOs may be existing trader associations as well as new ones.

The goal is for these MBOs to focus on permitting, collective buying, representation to market (reputation), finding customers, sharing learnings among members, increasing space available for trade and advocating for labour rights.

Stream 3: Movement Building

We develop leadership and good workplace practices (e.g. communication and admin) among our volunteer corp through training and by involvement in all streams of our work.

We also have a concept of what a well functioning branch looks like. It shifts based on how it works to attain goals of the movement and on how it motivates volunteers and members.

It is important that the unemployed are the leaders in their own struggle.

Our movement advocates for better job creation and renders visible the experience of the unemployed. We call for better treatment of the unemployed in their search for work by employers and recruiters. This includes the cost of travel, grooming and clothing for interviews and also printing, copying, postage and mobile phone data required to make applications.

We have national-level policy recommendations to make South Africa a working society, however we have yet to coordinate a campaign to promote them.

Job Opportunities, Fairness & OfW Member Tiering

Being fair to all our members when selecting for opportunities as well as helping our members generate opportunities for themselves is key to what we do.

OfW operates a tiering system at all branches. The higher a member''s tier the more likely the member is to be selected for an opportunity OfW as a movement (or a particular branch) has some control over.

The more members search for work for themselves, the higher their tier. Those who help others by volunteering become the highest tier. Volunteers get a week''s training on spreadsheets, word processing, calendars, our staff website, running workshops and other elements of running the branch.

As our highest tier, volunteers get first refusal on all opportunities at the branch that they may qualify for. Because of this they disappear quickly into jobs and it compels the movement constantly to keep training new volunteers. This training of new volunteers is done entirely by the experienced existing volunteers.

Tier 1: Inducted Member

A person who has been to the introduction but hasn''t properly started on their CV.

Tier 2: Member started on CV

Member has started on their CV on our website - i.e. has at least one entry under education or employment on their CV.

Tier 3: Member with Completed CV

Member has completed their CV and it has been checked by one of our volunteer branch staff.

Tier 4: Member Done Rapid Application Workshop

Member has done our workshop on i) how to generate many prospective employer leads using our personalised email scripts containing their perfected CVs and ii) extremely quick and effective ways of responding to job ads that have an email or WhatsAppable phone number.

Tier 5: Member Is Interview and Job Prepared

Member is familiar with interview and job readiness best principles.

Tier 6: Member Working as Volunteer Staff

A member has completed the full volunteer staff training and how has worked at least one shift. Among working volunteers, the more shifts you do, the more likely you are to be selected for opportunities.

Press

DAILY MAVERICK: Nine million people out of work for more than a year — whither unemployment in South Africa?
By Ayal Belling, 15 November 2023

DAILY MAVERICK: Hundreds of thousands of jobs likely to disappear with Godongwana’s public employment budget cuts
By Ayal Belling, 6 November 2023

DAILY MAVERICK: A job opportunity for every South African – the promise of a new party formed by unemployed people
By Ayal Belling, 21 June 2023

DAILY MAVERICK: An ‘extraordinary and loving’ activist – who was struggling for dignity in Gugs – has been gunned down
By Pamela Silwana, Ayal Belling and Marina Hall, 24 January 2023

DAILY MAVERICK: The high price of economic bumbling and austerity: 64% of working-age people are without jobs
By Ayal Belling (OfW), 2 December 2021

DAILY MAVERICK: Unemployment for black South Africans is worse today than in 1994
By Ayal Belling (OfW), 12 November 2020

DAILY MAVERICK: Local government elections 2021 – a chance to put the ‘public’ back into public institutions
By Pamela Silwana & Ayal Belling (OfW), 28 July 2020

DAILY MAVERICK: Unemployment just before lockdown was worst on record and is expected to get much worse
By Ayal Belling (OfW), 24 June 2020

DAILY MAVERICK: Crisis sees Cape Town suburbs reach across the great social divide
By Pamela Silwana (OfW), 31 March 2020

DAILY MAVERICK: ‘If I tell my daughter there is no hope, I am killing her’
By Pamela Silwana (OfW), 17 March 2020

DAILY MAVERICK: Unemployment scourge: ‘The challenge is macro’ and there is hope
By Ed Stoddard (staff writer), 6 March 2020

WATCH: OfW Gugulethu volunteer, Pamela Silwana, on Unemployment Panel at The Daily Maverick Gathering 2020 at the CTICC
The Gathering, 6 March 2020

DAILY MAVERICK: Reply to Ayal Belling: We are revolutionising government’s approach to youth employment
By Saul Musker (the Presidency), 24 February 2020

DAILY MAVERICK: The SONAs of dead and underfunded ideas
By Ayal Belling (OfW), 21 February 2020

DAILY MAVERICK: Jobless youth one of Ramaphosa’s main priorities
By Sandisiwe Shoba (staff writer), 14 February 2020

DAILY MAVERICK: South Africa's State of Unemployment Disaster
By Ayal Belling (OfW), 12 February 2020

LISTEN: Radio interview with John Maytham on Afternoon Drive
By Ayal Belling (OfW) on CapeTalk, 11 February 2020

DAILY MAVERICK: Using Barack Obama’s organising model to tackle SA’s unemployment crisis
By Ayal Belling (OfW), 21 January 2020

Better Treatment of Work-Seekers

Our advocacy towards this goal starts with the employers who hire our members. We firmly believe that greater recruitment friendliness would not only help combat discouragement of the unemployed but also positively affect staff turnover for all employers.

These recommendations arise directly from our members'' daily experiences. They create discouragement because of the cost and effort in repetitive speculative applications. For example, Lauren Graham at University of Johannesburg established in 2016 that the average cost of actively searching for an unemployed person is R938 per month.

The unemployed are being compelled repetitively to spend on travel, copying, certifying, data, grooming and clothing for interviews, with, in each case, an exceedingly small chance of getting an opportunity. This leads discouragement and giving up looking altogether as it is unaffordable and so often fruitless.

Recruitment Friendliness Recommendations

1. Conduct initial interviews where the unemployed live (e.g. at our branches). You will raise more candidates that way. Alternatively, conduct screening of candidates by phone wherever possible to reduce fruitless expenditure on travel and copying documents. Currently candidates have to cover the cost of travel, often at least twice, for an assessment and then interview (minimum R48 total for two round trips of a taxi ride). Sometimes candidates travel speculatively to stores to ask if they''re hiring.
   
   
2. Accept digital versions (e.g. a smartphone photo) of ID, bank and SARS statement perhaps until candidate is hired at which point copies can be checked against originals or copies made only then. Currently, candidates have to copy and certify before knowing they''re hired - i.e. the spend and effort are almost always wasteful. Copies are approximately R1 each at libraries and the cheapest internet cafes and copy shops that are often not near the individual''s home. Certification has to be under 3 months old and so requires repeat trips to police stations which are also often not near the individual''s home..
   
   
3. Pay wages with a higher frequency (daily or weekly) in the first two months to cover travel from hiring until the second payday for all staff paid up to, say, R5,000 per month. From starting training to the first payday can be up to 20 shifts or R480 at the minimum R24 per round trip - that is, if they''re not extremely lucky and can walk in to the store. We''ve noticed that our candidates miss shifts in their first month because loans to travel that they were hoping for from family and friends didn''t come through last minute. This has happened even in the second month due to the first payment often not providing the buffer needed for travel for the entire next month. The build up of financial pressure on the unemployed person during their search means they often enter employment saddled with debt to friends and family.

Township Physical Infrastructure for Cape Town

Cape Town is one of the world''s most unequal cities. It retains its Apartheid spatial layout with the poor and unemployed living in predominantly residential-only, often squalid townships and suburbs, and suffering a hugely disproportionate burden of social problems and crime.

There is an urgent need for physical infrastructure renewal and provision in the these areas of Cape Town - the rollout of which would be job creating and lead to better, safer, healthier livelihoods.

We call on the City to acknowledge that immediate action and investment are required to address extreme levels inequality, crime, poverty and various other social crises facing over half of its population. The City must use all measures at its disposal to prioritise budget, including its annual surplus and reserves for utilisation in high unemployment areas of the city to:

• build secure offices, spaces for light manufacturing, trading, training and organising
• fix the roads and pavements (e.g. so that children can walk to school safely)
• increase police presence and the funding of neighbourhood watch schemes
• improve the physical fabric of existing homes and build new homes
• provide free, reliable and full wifi coverage
• install and maintain flush toilets, overcoming resistance to the cost of expanding the sewerage system
• provide funding for organising of informal work into township trade associations

National Job Creation Policies and Funding Them

Our plan is for 16 million new jobs and a fully working society with a labour absorption rate like Thailand''s or Germany''s - 75% to 80% of the working age in work. Many of our suggestions are costly and some are hard. As such we have suggestions to fund them from changes to current budget allocation, new revenue and borrowing. Since developmental infrastructure, particularly in townships and poorer areas, returns far more than invested, public debt for such projects should be an easy choice.

1. Massive increase in construction in poorer areas, including:
   • 600,000 to 800,000 new homes per year for 10 years are required to clear the backlog and provide for new household formations
   • improving the fabric of the existing informal housing stock
   • building office space, sites for trading, light manufacturing, training and organising
   • improvement of roads, pavement, drainage and street furniture
   • provision of flush toilets and piped water inside homes
   • more, better maintained, safe, child-friendly public spaces
   • free widescale, reliable, fast wifi internet
   
   2 to 3 million jobs
   
   
2. Developmental and trade infrastructure (renewable energy, clinics, schools, roads, rail, ports, mass transit etc)
   
   1 million jobs
   
   
3. Agro-processing and high-value, labour-intensive agriculture (nuts, berries, avocados etc)
   
   500,000 to 1 million jobs
   
   
4. Focus on export competitive services and manufacture of sophisticated products with high local content (also for local consumption)
   
   2 million jobs
   
   
5. An informal trading agency with hundreds of branches in poorer communities to grow township economies. Each would liaise with member-based organisations per category of trade and offer a suite of tens of different trading activities - each coming with training, support and lending for tiny, informal businesses (e.g. fixing furniture, repairing phones, long life bags, smallholder farming, etc). As economic activity picks up in poorer areas due to urban and rural infrastructure rollout, the informal economy could flourish.
   
   10 million jobs

Your monetary donation will...

• make finding work easier and cheaper for our many members;
• help us advocate for better job creation in South Africa; and
• call for better, more dignified treatment of the unemployed by employers.

Your monetary (or property) donation to OfW is tax deductible. We will issue you with a section 18A receipt. OfW is a tax-exempt public benefit organisation with exemption number 930067474.

By Bank Transfer (preferred)

Any amount would be highly appreciated. No minimum (and no maximum).

• Bank: First National Bank (FNB)
• Account name: Organising for Work
• Account number: 62823353917
• Branch code: 250655

By Card Payment

Thank you for considering a donation. We incur a 3.6% fee when donations are received by card so, where possible, we prefer an EFT.

If you need any assistance, please get in touch on WhatsApp or donate@ofw.org.za

Contribute Your Time & Skills

Become a branch supporting volunteer or offer your skills, suggestions and knowhow, connections or social capital.

If you're a coder, our website is constantly being developed in response to member needs. It is built in C#, SQL Server, BLOB storage and hosted on Microsoft Azure.

If you have something to contribute, please get in touch on WhatsApp or donate@ofw.org.za

Previous and Ongoing Help

Our many unemployed volunteers run our branches on a daily basis and give our unemployed movement power, compassion and useful services in many communities.

Alastair McKenzie has donated many hours of his time working on our website. He created our CV checker - one of our most utilised functions. It assists volunteers in giving member CVs a thorough review. He has also undertaken a document storage migration for us.

Uta Reinöhl helps us with substantial and thorough editing of our press pieces. She is also a constant source of help on the tone and content of our messaging and is both a font of ideas and tireless sounding board.

Other Ways to Help

Donate a Laptop

While we make efforts to ensure our website and workshops work on even the most basic smartphone, it is almost always easier to use a computer for job seeking. As such we are always keen to receive more laptops for use in our branches. We will wipe the hard drive completely. Not just of your personal data but also your operating system will be wiped and the Ubuntu operating system will be installed.

Relationship with Employers

We offer employers candidates absolutely for free. However, many employers don't yet come directly to us to supply them with candidates. We would love your help opening relationships with the talent administrators and HR departments of all the larger employers.