Chair, as leaders we are custodians of the hopes and aspirations of our nation, so let us not play with the emotions of our people. Our country ranks amongst the highest in terms of unemployment. Government has promised to create five million jobs by 2020. However, this might just be one of those hollow promises.
Statistics SA's quarterly Labour Force Survey for the third quarter of 2010 records the fact that one in four South Africans - 25,3% - is unemployed at present. If we use government's official definition, including discouraged job seekers, the figure rises to one in three, which is 33,1%. This amounts to 6,4 million South Africans who are unable to find work, support their families or build towards their hopes and aspirations.
An endeavour that affects the labour market must, therefore, be meticulously contemplated. Attempts that can help build an environment conducive to significant job creation have to be urgently considered. In the same way, measures that may exacerbate the unemployment crisis have to be avoided at all costs.
The DA unequivocally supports measures that safeguard the rights of employees; exploitative labour practices have no place in our hard-earned democracy. However, I want to tell you that we hold that legitimate calls for fair labour laws have been hijacked by a self-serving interest group, which is now using claims of exploitation as a ruse to boost its membership numbers. The DA declares that the four Labour Bills that were gazetted on 17 December 2010 are designed partly to address the legitimate problems and partly to appease Cosatu, Congress of South African Trade Unions, and boost the number of unionised workers. We assert that they are misguided and do not serve the interests of the masses of this country.
In principle, the DA has no objection to employees being unionised, neither do we object in principle to an interest group acting to defend its own interests.
The problem is with the Cabinet and the Department of Labour, who are acceding to Cosatu's demands with little regard to vulnerable workers who stand to lose jobs, or to the plight of the unemployed who will find it harder than ever to find jobs, should these measures be promulgated.
As the Department of Labour's own impact assessment has indicated, the cost of relatively few new permanent, and therefore potentially unionised jobs will be the destruction of hundreds of thousands, and quite possibly a million jobs in the South African economy.
The equation is simple; you can either have a few more permanent jobs, and a lot more unemployment, or you can have more temporary jobs, and a lot less unemployment.
Clearly Cosatu would prefer the former option, for it provides them with the opportunity to boost their membership numbers and thus collect more affiliation fees, but the vast majority of South Africans would prefer the latter. This, ultimately, is why we believe these proposed measures are wrong-minded and need to be reconsidered.
The impact assessment commissioned on this matter by the Department of Labour says that the jobs of 2,13 million South Africans classified as fixed-term, temporary or seasonal workers will be placed in jeopardy by these legislative measures.
Not all these workers will lose their jobs - some temporary workers might be rehired in a permanent capacity. However, the majority will be made redundant, with the impact assessment going as far as to conclude that the end result would have serious destabilising effects in the labour market. This is a quite unprecedented level of condemnation in a government- commissioned report.
The DA holds that the creation of a vibrant, growing economy must be at the heart of the effort to address unemployment and alleviate poverty in South Africa. This is essentially the standard by which these proposed amendments must be judged.
Will they help to create quality jobs, and enhance skills development? Will they help to alleviate poverty, based on the studies available to us and our careful assessment of these provisions set in these legislative proposals? The DA's answer to these questions is no!
Between our catastrophic levels of unemployment and the prospect of an economy with full employment stands the impenetrable barrier of our labour laws. These wicked laws are not only throwing millions of our people into the dustbins of joblessness, are not only crippling our economy, are not only the primary reason for South Africa's being amongst the most unequal societies in the world, but they are a violation of human rights. Our labour laws deny South Africans a fundamental right - the right to work.
The South African economy is performing badly despite our vast natural resources, well-managed national finances and considerable industrial experience; we should be growing rapidly and lifting our people out of abject poverty. Instead, we have failed since 1994 even to reach 6% growth. We are easily exceeded by other developing countries. [Time expired.] [Applause.]