Madam Speaker, hon Ministers, the staff from government departments and esteemed guests, the South African industrial relations landscape has evolved over many years and is still evolving to this day.
In 1907, white mine workers in the then Transvaal downed tools as a result of their frustration that the employers were not taking their grievances seriously. In 1913, again, white mine workers went out on strike at Kleinfontein Mine in Benoni. In 1922, thousands of white mine workers embarked on a massive strike on the Rand, popularly known as the Rand Rebellion.
In all these instances the state either intervened by setting up a commission to investigate the causes of the unrest or used brutal force to suppress the strike. What came out of all these events is the inherent tension in the industrial relations world of work, which more often than not ends in a protest of one kind or another.
Labour relations, especially in a country with such a difficult and painful past, will always be a challenge as one tries to find the delicate balance between the ideal and the harsh realities that are confronting the working people. The growing gap between the rich and the working poor compounds the situation. The increasing level of sophistication of an average worker and the glaring contradictions in society up the stakes. Whilst many analysts and commentators make us believe that there is a silver bullet for the industrial relations challenges in this country, many of their proposed solutions remain very utopian. How do you justify the gap between the CEO's salary and perks of the mining companies and those of the workers at the lower end of the scale? The Minister mentioned how much the Lonmin CEO earns, saying it is about R850 000 a month, while the rock driller gets between R4 000 and R5 000 a month. How do you explain the reason why top management on the mines live in proper and often company-subsidised houses as opposed to the general workers, who live in compounds, in "emkhukhwini", or shacks?
Yet, when workers make huge percentage wage demands, there is an outcry. Percentages are misleading and, if viewed narrowly, they could blow the situation out of proportion. As far as I know, 100% of R1 is R1. Whilst 100% sounds huge, what it represents in real terms is negligible, purely because of the low baseline. If the baseline is low, a large percentage may, in theory, sound out of sync with the conventional norm.
I have asked some journalists who were behind the story that the wage demands are insane to tell me if they know the baseline wages of the workers that they wrote about. None of them knew with absolute certainty. Most workers are trapped by the low baseline. Therefore, high percentage wage demands may not always translate into an insane amount in real terms, or "insanity" as some have dared to suggest.
Some are quick to accuse poor service delivery, lack of trade union leadership and labour laws as the reasons for the challenges facing industrial relations in South Africa, when inequality and the skewed wealth distribution between the owners of capital and the creators of wealth could be the real culprits.
It is a fact that our labour market is characterised by inequalities and the huge numbers of the working poor. It is within this context that when dealing with labour market challenges, we have to understand the history and the political climate within which we operate. We always acknowledge that South Africa operates within a global village and that such an intricacy sometimes forces us to abandon our values and that which is morally binding to our cause.
These amendments are a reflection of the fact that we operate within an environment where we have to nurture economic growth, while at the same time establishing a sound protection system for vulnerable workers.
In 2009, the people of South Africa gave the ANC the mandate to take the following steps to prevent the exploitation of workers: Ensure decent work for all workers, as well as protect the employment relationship; introduce laws to regulate contract work, subcontracting and outsourcing; address the problems of labour broking and prohibit certain abusive practices; introduce provisions to facilitate unionisation of workers and the conclusion of sectoral collective agreements to cover vulnerable workers in these different legal relationships; and ensure the right to permanent employment for affected workers.
Protecting vulnerable workers is not an option but a duty imposed on us by the Constitution of this country. The obsession with cheap labour and the exploitation of workers as the modus of profit accumulation has to come to an end. Employers must abandon business models that rely on cheap labour as the foundation for profitability.
It is also absurd that every time the ANC-led government introduces measures to protect vulnerable workers, it is blackmailed with job losses. Some even mount the propaganda that labour brokers create jobs when it is companies that create jobs. Labour brokers are mere intermediaries whose survival is based on slicing off a big chunk of workers' hard-earned wages.
In 2008, the Portfolio Committee on Labour took the decision to hold a public hearing on labour broking, given the amount of public debate and the uproar from workers about the abuses that were taking place in the labour broking business. As a result of the countrywide submissions and public hearings that were held in various provinces, the committee came up with a set of recommendations to the Department of Labour. The current amendments have their origins in the growing informalisation or casualisation of work that has become a feature of the South African labour market over the past decade.
In 2009, the ANC's election manifesto gave urgency to the task of introducing amendments by setting out the passing of the Labour Relations Amendment Bill by this House, which will ensure that anomalies and uncertainties that have arisen from the interpretation of the labour relations and the basic conditions of employment legislation are clarified; that the primary labour market institutions such as the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, the Labour Court, the Essential Services Committee and the Labour Inspectorate are strengthened; that vulnerable categories of workers receive adequate protection and are employed in conditions of decent work; and that South Africa complies with its international obligations in terms of international labour standards.
The ANC cares about its people and is ready to find solutions that accommodate the concerns of people. As such, the regulatory provisions that deal with temporary employment services, following last week's proposal for a zero-month transition period, the ANC agreed on a three-month transitional period for the temporary employment service and the client to determine if a vacancy exists within a company to place the employee with the client company.
For the ANC, this was not an easy turnaround, understanding the cases of abuse that were brought before the committee during the public hearings in 2008. However, this was another instance where we had to find the delicate balance between the ideal and the concerns of others; hence we had to swallow the bitter pill in the interests of progress.
Let me take this opportunity to thank the hon members who serve in the Portfolio Committee on Labour for their co-operation, albeit robust and extremely difficult at times. We may have had our differences in some instances, but that is the nature of the beast that we are dealing with, proverbially speaking. I hope this House will be united in giving these Bills the green light, as that would be the right thing to do. I thank you. [Applause.]