Ministers and Deputy Ministers, as we deliberate on this budget of the Department of Labour for the current financial year, we should pause and ponder the significance and role of the department in the current political, economic and social conditions that millions of workers; business; and civil society in general are faced with.
This budget should therefore, in our view, be seen in context. It must be a budget that will locate the Department of Labour as an important role- player in social cohesion; economic stability; promoting and supporting entrepreneurs; saving existing jobs and helping in creating new ones; conciliating and arbitrating in labour relations disputes; and profiling workers' rights as human rights, as both the Minister and the chairperson of the committee have indicated.
In that context, therefore, the ANC remembers Marikana and hopes that the current chapter of that tragedy will be concluded; justice will be done for them; and that the lives of the 54 people who died then will not be in vain. The farm workers in the Western Cape, in particular De Doorns, did what this committee had anticipated when we went on oversight and witnessed their appalling working and living conditions. They took to the streets in demand for a better life and better wages.
Due to the ripple effects of the global economic crisis, and what has been referred to as a double deep recession and depression, we have also witnessed more strikes in support of wage demands, but also we have witnessed lockouts, as workers and bosses deadlocked in negotiations.
This year, various sectors of the economy, including the mining and manufacturing sectors, will be engaged in wage negotiations and unions have already submitted their wage demands. As some have already hastened to condemn the trade union movement for what they referred to as unreasonable demands, we hope that they will also remember and join in condemnation of the massive pays in bonuses and shares pocketed by chief executive officers, CEOs, and shareholders of those companies. Any partisan intervention and commentary which is intended to be framed as antiworkers and anti-unions, as if it is illegal to be part or members of the trade union in this country, will not be tolerated.
Rising unemployment, especially youth unemployment, has dominated the social discourse and is regarded as a ticking time bomb. As members of the portfolio committee, we are in unison that the role of the department is very critical in ensuring that it facilitates conditions for people to be employed.
Again, with the Quarterly Labour Force Survey reporting a decline in real employment with the rate of unemployment having risen from 24,9% to 25,2%, every government department, including this one, has to be united in action to restore the hopes of millions that democracy can only work if they also are at work.
Hon Chairperson, in our engagement as political parties in the Portfolio Committee of Labour, we were in unison in our recommendation that the challenges facing our country of inequality, poverty and unemployment, and the role that the department and its agencies have to play, require an injection of more resources in the coming Medium-Term Expenditure Framework. We will be using our powers as Members of Parliament through the budgetary review process and the newly established Budget Office, to ensure that the department is further resourced in order to fulfil its role in the challenges that face our country.
To be specific, we have recommended that the labour centres of the department need to add, as part of their responsibilities, connecting the unemployed with available jobs. In many cases, people with the requisite skills are not placed in proper jobs because they do not have information about the availability of those jobs. Many entrepreneurs disinvest from the productive sector, arguing that there is a skills shortage, whilst thousands of young and old hold qualifications from sector education and training authority, Setas, further education and training, FET, colleges and universities, and cannot be connected with these entrepreneurs.
During an oversight visit in KwaZulu-Natal, at one of the labour centres, we asked the young people who were there to fill in a form that captures information about their skills, what we can do as Members of Parliament to help facilitate their employment. One of the striking things the young person mentioned is the cost of looking for a job, which starts with buying newspapers daily to search in the jobs section; the travel to get the application forms; the postal costs for these forms; the travel costs to interviews; and the stress they go through waiting to hear whether they have been employed or not. These are some of the challenges that skilled and unemployed people face.
These may be meagre resources for some of us who are sitting here in the House, but these are the real challenges that the young people, in particular out there, are faced with. These are the real challenges that face unemployed young people and require that we expand the responsibilities and tasks allocated to labour centres. I agree with the IFP that we need to have more labour centres in communities where more unemployed people and people who need the services of the labour centres are.
We also have to ensure that we resource these centres with proper information technology, IT, to enable jobs search; distribution of information regarding available jobs; and facilities for them to be able to post, fax or email their job applications so that they help the unemployed in their quest to get jobs. Already, more employers and employees are relying on the department to connect with each other. There is a cost - which I suppose we have to verify - which was mentioned by the DA, in locating unemployed workers with jobs and connecting them with permanent jobs. This is something that we will have to look into. [Applause.]
There has been a lot of talk around the transformation of the South African labour market. When I say we have to look into that, I meant that we have to check its veracity, because I doubt if government can spend - before you clap hands ... [Laughter.]
There has been a lot of talk around the transformation of the South African labour market and the need to ensure its flexibility as a means to create more jobs and absorb first-time entrants into the labour market. This issue was raised by the hon member from the ACDP. The essence of the submissions made has been that we need to make it easier to hire and fire new entrants into the labour market. If our logic is to create more jobs and ensure that we absorb more young people into the labour market, why should we legislate exploitation and super exploitation by making it easier to fire people?
Our mandate as legislators is to make it easier for employers to hire new entrants into the labour market, not to fire them. Our Constitution, which is the cornerstone of our labour laws, serves as a guarantor for all South Africans to enjoy fair labour practice, and despite its defects, has been hailed as one of the best in the world. To suggest that our role must be to facilitate the firing of workers is basically ridiculous. As the ANC, we have no intention to deviate from the spirit and letter that inspired those who worked tirelessly to ensure that we have a transformed labour market system and labour relations. [Applause.]
Hon Chairperson, there has been widespread criticism of the role played by the National Economic Development and Labour Council, Nedlac, in building social cohesion and facilitating dialogue amongst major stakeholders in society. We are happy that those who are active at Nedlac have listened to some of these criticisms. Our view is that Nedlac remains a critical institution for social dialogue between civil society, business, labour and government. In the past, major legislation and negotiations on various policies and socioeconomic issues were dealt with at Nedlac, and that function continues to be performed in that institution.
These labour laws that many have subjected to undue criticism were as a result of the sterling work that Nedlac has done in ensuring that all chambers are agreed on the basic tenets of the protection of worker rights and the regulation of the labour market. There have been calls from various quarters for an inclusive economic Convention for a Democratic SA, Codesa, which will assess our progress in transforming economic ownership and control since 1994. What better place for such an economic Codesa than at Nedlac?
It is therefore important that all stakeholders take their legislated responsibilities at Nedlac more seriously and commit to dealing with in as much detail, where there are differences, as possible. The manner in which labour disputes have turned violent, and somewhat of a lack of interest in engagement displayed by social partners, is indicative of the need to revive dialogue amongst major stakeholders in society, with Nedlac playing a central role.
We want to submit, as the ANC, that Nedlac cannot fulfil its founding mandate with the meagre resources that it has been allocated; and we need to review this budget element through further allocation by National Treasury and the adjustment of allocated resources from other agencies.
One of the things that have come out from this debate has been the old issue of the Regulatory Impact Assessment, to be conducted by government, in relation to the labour law. This issue has been raised in the portfolio committee and, unfortunately when some of the Members of Parliament were sleeping, we agreed that if the DA wanted to conduct a Regulatory Impact Assessment on the labour law, they should do that. The reality is that government has done the Regulatory Impact Assessment report. [Interjections.] On the basis of that Regulatory Impact Assessment report, the Bills, which were initially presented at Nedlac, were changed in order to suit that Regulatory Impact Assessment. Our continued contribution, at least as the ANC, is mandated not by some bureaucrats locked into an office making Regulatory Impact Assessments, but on the basis of submissions that were made by various stakeholders to the portfolio committee. Those are the people who mandate us and they are going to inform our policy.
Hon members, to come here and complain that the DA is said to be opposing affirmative action and then to try and come up with a flimsy defence, is not about what the policy positions of the DA are; it is about what is happening in practice. Part of what the DA has been saying, for some time now, is that there is a created history of the DA and they want to come out of that created history and tell their own story. The reason you want to tell your own story is because people generally believe that the DA will bring back apartheid. It is not because people dream about that, but it is because of what has been happening in the Western Cape. The composition of the senior management in the Western Cape is still white male dominated. The people have no choice but to conclude that what is happening in the Western Cape will be replicated throughout the whole country. [Applause.]
If the executive of the DA is a reflection of what was happening in the executive of the apartheid system - pale white male - people have no choice but to conclude that the DA will bring back apartheid. If in its policy interventions, people are forced to go onto the freeway and dump faeces in protest, because the DA is failing in service delivery in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha, yet they provide the best of services in Camps Bay and everywhere else, the people have no choice because that is how the apartheid system has treated them. [Applause.] People will therefore believe that the DA will bring back apartheid.
It is quite funny and I'm quite happy that the DA today has said that they are in support, grudgingly, of the Youth Employment Accord, because we were shocked when the DA issued a statement saying that they oppose the Youth Employment Accord and that they are in favour of the Youth Wage Subsidy. At the same time, when that statement was issued, I was with the leader of the DA youth, who knows what the needs, interests and aspirations of young people are and who appended his signature on the Youth Employment Accord. Because the seniors in the DA want to oppose what the youth in the DA want, they issued a statement - but also because of this permanent oppositionist character - that says that they don't agree with the Youth Employment Accord, when their youth leader was there with us, enjoying the music; singing Umshini wam; and also signing the Youth Employment Accord. [Laughter.]
In the portfolio committee, we have received, as part of the recommendations, a turnaround strategy. As members of the portfolio committee, with the Minister and also the director-general, DG, we are in unison that things need to change at the Compensation Fund. Things cannot go the way in which they are going. We were quite happy and we were not deaf when we received a report that there is a pilot IT project in place. On the basis of that pilot project, things are beginning to turn around and we are happy to hear that. We hope that all of these things will lead to change in the lives of the millions of workers who have pinned their hope on the Compensation Fund.
Hon Kganare, it is one thing to label the National Union of Mineworkers, NUM, as sweetheart unions, and inadvertently embrace in your assertions illegal ways and means to force employers into a bargaining process. There is a suggestion that the NUM could not get the extra money which Lonmin ultimately offered because lives were being lost and the economy was going down. If you suggest that that is what the NUM and any of the Cosatu unions need to do, and then turn around and say that we cannot be held hostage by populist demands by the NUM, that is actually a contradiction in terms.
Do you support the fact that the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, Amcu, which advocated privately and publicly, as is coming out from the commission, for violence targeted at NUM members? Do you advocate that that should be the way in which bargaining processes should be done, on the one hand? You cannot have the one over the other. I think it is quite unfortunate that we have that kind of situation.
I hope that when you go to hospital and get treatment from nurses who belong to National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union, Nehawu, they will give you a good injection that is in line with the sickness that you may be suffering from. [Laughter.] If we begin to narrow down and we want to regulate the political options of each and every South African, including public workers, we have to be very careful about that.
In the past, we had a situation wherein political rights of all individuals were being questioned. If you are saying that we need to go back to those days, where we regulate which political parties public officials belong to or which trade unions affiliate or have an alliance with, I think that is quite unfortunate. I think that it is also informed by not only bitterness, but also by jealousy. Jealousy because the same person that you are quoting, hon Willy Madisha, tried - when Cope was beginning to toddle and giving hope to sell-outs and everybody - to form a federation and unions. That thing has failed, and has even reflected in his failure as a Member of Parliament. I think that it is based on that.
More importantly, a lot of workers, employers and businesses have pinned their hopes on the process that is under way between the portfolio committee and that of the various amendments of labour laws. We agree with what hon Minister Pravin Gordhan said yesterday - that we need leadership. However, leadership that is underpinned by opportunism; cheap political point scoring and nothing else, looking at the forthcoming general elections, will never, ever take this country anywhere. Thank you. [Applause.]