Thus, the proposal to allow companies greater freedom to retrench and downsize was to go hand in hand with more generous benefits to those retrenched.
In other words, retrenchment was not to be a cheap option available to employers, and the cost would make them think twice about what they were doing.
At the same time, employees would know that their interests were tied most closely to the health of the company they worked for, and that they could lose their jobs if the company did not do well.
So it is a pity that this even-handed approach to labour reforms has been found unacceptable, while the labour minister (who has himself opposed the more sensible kind of labour law reform) pushes for changes that are retrograde from labour
