The cabinet has approved and sent to parliament legislation that will allow the employment and labour minister to set transformation targets in the workplace.
Until now, the government had no real targets and the Employment Equity Act (EEA) required only “reasonable progress” in workplace transformation. The bill is intended to accelerate transformation by putting clear targets in place.
Thembinkosi Mkhaliphi, chief director of labour relations at the department, told Business Day the EEA Amendment Bill of 2020 will empower the minister, in consultation with sector stakeholders, to introduce sector-specific employment equity targets.
The Commission for Employment Equity 2018 report, which was released in August 2019, showed that since the adoption of the EEA little transformation has taken place in the workplace, especially in the middle and upper ranks.
The report showed that at top management, 65.5% of the positions in the government and private sector were held by whites; 15.1% by Africans; 9.7% by Indians; 5.3% by coloureds; and 3.4% by foreign nationals. Males occupied 76.5% of the positions and females 23.5%.
Africans fared better in the government, where they made up 71% of top management, while whites held 69.6% of the top management positions in the private sector and 71% of senior management positions.
“The bill also reduces the reporting burden on small businesses. We are saying that if a company employs fewer than 50 people, irrespective of its turnover, it doesn’t have to report on its employment equity targets,” said Mkhaliphi.
Labour consultant Tony Healy said the amendment is a “good idea”. He said workplace demographics in 2020 are still “skewed in favour of [the] white male”, and while progress has been made on the contentious transformation issue, it has not happened at an acceptable pace for the government.
‘Social engineering’
Healy said there are two schools of thought on the subject: one says there is no capacity to transform quickly, while the other says there is no skills shortage and that “resistance to transformation is a legacy of how businesses were run pre-democracy”.
However, labour analyst Michael Bagraim described the bill as “ridiculous”, saying that “social engineering is never good, it’s always destructive in its nature. This will strangle businesses because employers want to employ people who can do the work and not to necessarily meet some transformation targets”.
Bagraim said the bill is regulative and “will make it more difficult to create employment ... I think they must just change the Labour Relations Act to say you can fire white people to make way for black people. And that’s unconstitutional”.
Employment and labour minister Thulas Nxesi has been cracking the whip since his appointment in 2018. In January 2019, the national minimum wage law and the strike ballot legislation came into effect. The strike ballot law requires a secret ballot before unions embark on a strike. It also empowers Nxesi to intervene if a strike is damaging the economy.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.