What does a white male over 50 with tertiary qualifications & experience have to do to get employment in SA?
What does a white male over 50 with tertiary qualifications & experience have to do to get employment in SA?
You simply forget about that idea and start your own little enterprise.
What do you do Jan ? And what experience do you have ?
Hi, I have been trying but not easy to get investors or partners. I designed and built a machine in the late 80's that takes soil samples and is self driven. I know it is a winner as I have never seen such a machine. Lot of requests to tell them more but I wont until an agreement is signed. It has huge export potential.
Thanks, I will continue to search but I am sure that I will find something to do. I just feel that it is such a waste of not being able to share your knowledge as I learnt so much from the industry leaders that I was fortunate to work with. This sounds like the same old story but when you have to work with "younger" (as I once was) people in the field, you realise that you have so much to give and at the moment it is going to waste. Maybe that is why our country is in the state it is in. I was fortunate to live and work in both SA's and there is a clear difference and in some instances not for the better.
I am going to speak very broadly because what you are saying ties in with my thinking.
The problem is not with work but with money. There is lots of work to do. Each of us needs stuff to get done and so does every business. Most people have skills of some sort and are able to do work that has value to another. The problem is that there is not enough money to pay one another to do work. I keep ranting about the banks but the reality is that the banks add very little value to our lives yet take a large proportion of our income. Lets leave the government and their taxes aside for the moment. When you pay me for the work that I have done the bank takes a percentage when I deposit the money. They charge me admin fees, internet fess and whatever other fees they can dream up. They then charge me when I pass the money on to another person.
When societies were close people were able to barter and work on mutual credit systems. In a mutual credit system we would provide services and goods to one another without the use of currency. So, lets say I do laser cutting for you, the system would owe me 100 units and you would owe the system 100 units. I could then use my 100 units to purchase 100 units of wood from a provider and he could use your 100 units of labour.
We have allowed ourselves to be throttled by the notion of money. Consider this analogy, the economy is a human body, the government is the bran and everything else are body parts. Currency is blood and oxygen richness of the blood is the value of the currency. Ok, hold that thought and don't extrapolate the analogy any further (I know that you are thinking that the government is actually the arse but lets say "the perfect government" is the brain) The banks are like parasites manning each and every artery vein and capillary. They throttle each and every flow and then siphon off a percentage for themselves. The blood that they siphon off is blood that that the body manufactured and needs to survive.
Ok, back to the current situation. There are millions of people whose creativity and skills go to waste. People take on crappy jobs that they hate to make money. Many people such as yourself do not have jobs yet you have tremendous skills and knowledge. The problem is bigger that black vs. white, BEE etc. The problem lies in the fact that everything that we do first has to be translated into money before it can be considered to be useful.
There is a huge stumbling block to my ideas and it is the matter of trust, we don't trust one another to keep our word or play fair.
I will describe my setup and what I would like to see happen. I run a small business from the house. We do laser cutting, cnc machining, resin casting and lots more interesting things. I always have more work than I can handle and I need lots of services and materials. As you well know it is a very difficult circle to manage. You need to pay for marketing, then you need to pay for materials, staff, etc. Growth is very slow because we have to grow organically. I cannot go out and market too much because if I do I won't be able to supply demand. I cannot hire more staff because I may or may not get and retain the market. I do not have capital laying around to build up stock and materials. But...I am able to offer my services in exchange for other services rather than cash and that is how small business can grow together. I may do some drawing or cnc cutting for somebody who does assembly work for me and they may use the services of a bookkeeper and in turn give the bookkeeper fruit that they grow in their garden etc. This all sounds fanciful but it is not. My production systems suck and I am sure you would straighten them out in two minutes flat but I would not be able to pay you in cash for your services. I may be able to pay you in products cut on the laser for example.
Look, I think that you need to see how you can use your skills to create your own business. I think that you should see whether you are able to trade your skills for something else that you could use or sell and then build on that. There are millions of people in this country who have the same problem and each one of us see ourselves as individual islands in a sea of jobless despair. If we could get together and exchange skills we could free ourselves from the noose that money ties around our necks.
wynn (04-Jul-14)
Jan - I have just spoken to my girls and we are looking for similar, but with experience in heavy engineering ie overhead cranes ??
Would your experience cover this ?
Alternatively if I can make a suggestion - why don't you upload your cv onto our data base via our website. Please make sure you fill in ALL the required blocks. It will then go directly into our data base whereby when something comes up - your cv will be matched with key words that our girls look for. Another option is to upload your cv on Pnet. This is a job portal which is open to all recruiters that subscribe to it. There is work out there for us older okes, it is limited but by uploading your cv as above will certainly help you.
PS Please note - that this costs you nothing. The costs are covered by the recruitment companies.
Hi, I have loaded my CV on all the job portal/websites. Some time ago I mentioned of being more qualified than the "senior" guy interviewing me, and that I got the feeling right away that I would not be successful because I am more qualified than him.
Adrian, makes perfect sense but money can be used as a form of payment only that we have become a society or of who is doing who.
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