Ban brokers, lose jobs warns Busa

Parliament's portfolio committee on labour is scheduled to meet today (11 June) to finalise the bill and decide on the outstanding matters‚ including the regulation of labour brokers (described in the bill as temporary employment service providers)‚ strike ballots and picketing rules. The indications emerging from the committee's meeting last week were that ANC MPs were opposed to all three issues‚ wanting to prohibit the operations of labour brokers altogether.

Busa said that inconsistent messages by the government about the labour market "further damage business confidence and impacted negatively on SA's already weak economic growth projections for the year".

Busa said in a statement that business would be "deeply perturbed" if the MPs took the decisions indicated because not only would this further destabilise the fragile economy but would make a mockery of negotiations in the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac).

Rigorous negotiations

"These bills have been subject to negotiations between government‚ labour‚ business and the community constituencies for over three years at Nedlac and were presented to the labour portfolio committee in March last year. While it is understood that the process of public hearings plays a role in law-making‚ care should be taken not to undermine a thorough social dialogue backed by comprehensive supporting studies‚" Busa said.

"Discussions in the portfolio committee and its line-by-line deliberations on the bill did not do any justice to the structures such as Nedlac that have been put in place to deal with these matters‚" Busa said.

Busa said that business had gone to great lengths to get a regulatory impact assessment study of the proposed legislative amendments. This indicated that hundreds of thousands of job would be lost if the proposed amendments were introduced.

"Government's own regulatory impact assessment study of the 2010 proposed amendment bill indicated significant job losses if labour brokers were to be banned. As a result of this study‚ it was recommended that regulation of brokers was a more sensible option than an outright ban‚ taking into consideration the impact on employment‚ in particular," it said.

Political grandstanding

Democratic Alliance labour spokesman Sej Motau rejected a statement by ANC chief whip in Parliament Mathole Motshekga that said "The ANC will avoid any push for a vote on any of the clauses but will seek consensus on these issues with all the other political parties."

Motau said this was "simply not true" and did not reflect what happened during the committee's deliberations on the bill last week when ANC MPs "pushed for an amendment to the Labour Relations Act that would effectively ban labour broking by limiting temporary employment services to 'zero months'".

"The research speaks for itself - the banning of labour brokers would result in the loss of employment for over 850‚000 people currently employed by labour brokers. This is in terms of the department of labour's own regulatory impact assessment‚ which also warns that banning labour brokers will not only contribute to increased levels of unemployment in the country‚ but deprive the households attached to these workers of a valuable source of wage income.

"The ANC's acrobatics on the issue of labour brokers is nothing more than a pre-election charm offensive to warm relations with Cosatu (Congress of South African Trade Unions) - a pre-campaign gift handed over on a silver platter at the expense of poor‚ vulnerable South Africans. The ANC's conduct in the labour committee this week makes a mockery of Nedlac and the legislative process over the past three years‚" Motau claimed.

Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge