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Some fly and some fall in stock market's... Some fly and some fall in stock market's... Some fly and some fall in stock market's... Some fly and some fall in stock market's... Some fly and some fall in stock market's... The casualties of October '9... Impasse in battle for labour market refo... Moulding the future of SA busines... Some fly and some fall in stock market's... Kaizer Chiefs may bring soccer to the tr... |
Impasse in battle for labour market reform
Jobs could be on the line if proposed legislation is passed by Parliament, writes MARCIA KLEIN
REACTION this week to various initiatives to enforce changes to SA's labour market indicates that labour, government and business remain at loggerheads over the direction labour reform is taking.
This week saw an amendment to the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill and debate on the labour issue at the annual convention of the SA Chamber of Business, as well as in Parliament. Defendants of new or proposed labour legislation said all proposals were in line with Gear, which is targeting massive growth in employment. They also struck a balance between the need for economic growth and equity in the workplace. But critics said the proposals would not lead to increased employment, but rather to less flexibility on the part of business and to the creation of new bureaucracies. Recent figures show that in the year to March, 62 000 jobs were lost - a far cry from the Gear target of the creation of 252 000 new jobs. At the Sacob convention, Andrew Levy, of industrial relations consultant Andrew Levy & Associates, said the debate had been typified as all or nothing, when it was really about striking the right balance between the needs of economic growth and a more equitable workplace. Levy said the controversial training levy, "which is effectively an employment tax, will lead us into the realms of bureaucracy". "It is not clear how this bureaucracy will be funded and I cannot see how it will encourage employers to train their employees," Levy added. He said the levy increased the marginal cost of having a particular employee and could affect the decision of whether to create the job or not.
There was also criticism that the department of labour was far closer to organised labour than to employers. "Officials of the department of labour are too remote - I have a sense of wasted opportunity. We have replaced the ideologue with grey shoes with the ideologue with granny print and sandals." Levy also criticised the proposed centralised collective bargaining, saying: "Here we are moving in the 180 degree opposite direction to everyone else in the world." Sipho Pityana, director-general of the labour department, said the department's policies and initiatives were "aimed at contributing to the goals and objectives of Gear in one way or another". "The Labour Relations Act, the bills on basic conditions of employment, skills development and the proposed bill on employment equity all illustrate the department's commitment to 'regulated flexibility' as outlined in Gear, as well as its attempts to strike a balance between the promotion of economic efficiency and the promotion of improved welfare and equity," he said. Anglo American group public affairs consultant Michael Spicer said that if wage rates were to be high compared with other countries, they needed to be heavily incentivised to worker performance. "This is perhaps the most important change required, and one retarded by an unwillingness on the part of many trade unions to put pay performance at risk." He said managers had an obligation to manage, which included changing work organisation and staffing levels. "Their ability to do this must be protected. This will mean insulating certain management decisions from collective bargaining." Spicer said SA had chosen a growth path "that is, in some respects, more ambitious than that typically followed by the Asian miracle economies". The first phase of Asian growth relied on low-wage, unskilled labour to attract investment and increase employment. The second step was to move to value-added activities and pay higher wages. "In placing a high premium on protecting the interests of currently employed workers, SA is essentially attempting to avoid the first phase and move straight to the second." Commenting on the attempt by various departments to raise taxes by a variety of levies, Spicer said none of them were in themselves unreasonable, but they cumulatively amounted to "death by a thousand cuts". In a submission to Parliament, Business South Africa said this week it did not support the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill. It said vague and ambiguous new provisions had been introduced "following discussions between the ANC and Cosatu to the exclusion of the business sector". "The singular insistence of the proposed bill to raise labour standards regardless of economic consequences cannot be supported by business, and is not consistent with the achievement of national economic and employment objectives," it added. It said full implementation of the proposed reduction of working hours and the increase in various leave entitlements would "reduce SA's annual working hours by 16%, and put SA, on average, 20% below annual working hours in countries which have comparable per capita GDPs".
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