Marion Edmunds
Labour Minister Tito Mboweni lobbied all political players this week — from National Party leader FW de Klerk to the African Christian Democratic Party — in a bid to save the Labour Relations Bill from unravelling in Parliament.
The round of meetings with political parties came in the wake of a decision by the Parliamentary Labour Portfolio Committee to hold public hearings and invite submissions on the Bill before it went to Parliament this session.
As the Cabinet has not yet approved the Bill in its entirety and it is still a secret document, the holding of public hearings would delay the passage of the Bill so much that it would be unlikely to get through Parliament before the recess.
The decision of the Labour Committee, headed by former Congress of South African Trade Unions leader Godfrey Oliphant, appears to have come as a surprise to Mboweni. It was made at a briefing on the Bill in Parliament on Tuesday.
The media were allowed to attend the briefing, but not to have sight of the document under discussion. Sources in the ministry say it was unfortunate that the committee meeting was open to the media.
This is despite the fact that the new South African Parliament prides itself on openness and transparency in the discussion of draft legislation.
The desire for transparency has been tested by the sense of urgency in the Labour Ministry to get the Bill through Parliament before the end of the year.
All parties in the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) who participated in the negotiations around the Bill are keen to see it in place and implemented by the next round of wage negotiations, so that the new structures envisaged in the Bill could be tested.
Mboweni has avoided putting pressure on the Labour Committee to back down on the suggestions of public hearings, but he has lobbied all the leaders of the political parties in the committee, to try to prevent the Bill from stalling. Sources in the ministry say it could be disastrous if the Parliamentarians started to pick away at the package deal in the Labour Relations Act and thereby reopen the agreements sealed between business, labour and government in Nedlac. The ministry harbours suspicions that some elements of the business community are trying to lobby committee members deliberately to stall the Bill.
“There are people who are using fat cheques to undermine the negotiations,” said Mboweni this week. He said he had made a pile of public submissions received by the Labour Department earlier in the year available to the Labour Committee.
However, Parliament has a right, through its committees, to scrutinse legislation and ask for comment before Bills go to Parliament. If the Labour Committee backs down in the face of Mboweni’s appeal s, it could be accused of merely being a rubber stamp to agreements made in Nedlac, a forum beyond Parliament.