Charlene Smith
Part of the unemployment problem is matching an employer’s needs with workers’ skills. With this in mind, the Department of Labour has embarked on a strategy — as part of a R200-million European Union loan for skills development — to create job banks.
Director General Sipho Pityana says employers will be able to access workers best suited for their needs, and the unemployed can be better informed of job opportunities. The project will not only see the department embarking on a skills upgrading scheme among its own labour office personnel at local authority level, but a massive R20-million computerisation and information technology project is under way to create the necessary links between labour offices, employers and the Internet. The project will enable the department to more accurately track skills shortages, unemployment and labour trends.
“New investors who wish to set up a particular sort of factory will be able to access data and discover the skills profile, wages earned, infrastructure and employment capacity in a specific area.”
The system will help analysts better assess high labour unrest in an area: “We may find there is a low understanding of labour legislation among unions or employers; there may be high levels of uncertainty with regard to jobs and extensive poverty and because of that demands around wages are disproportionate to productivity levels. Labour offices will in future have to have strategies to provide corrective solutions.”
Pityana and the Department of Labour will start by holding consultation sessions with business to find out how companies would like the project implemented to best serve employees and employers.
The project is part of a three-year strategic plan adopted late in 1996 to decentralise the activities of the department and to place more focus on local labour offices.
“One of the main reasons for inefficiency in government,” says Pityana, “is an over- concentration of authority at the top and in the centre. Decisions taken at the centre are less responsive to the needs of communities. Highly qualified people can’t take simple decisions.
“Head office must set norms and standards and develop policies and projects. Provincial offices must manage the implementation. There are 175 local labour centres and these have to be manned by more dedicated and skilled staff.
“Take unemployment insurance; at the moment those offices merely assist people to get benefits. We need to help them find jobs. It is important for the viability of the Unemployment Insurance Fund, and to ensure that people don’t lose skills through lengthy unemployment periods. We need to move beyond welfare: the department must be central to economic transformation.”
At present, skills counsellors in labour offices have a placement rate of 22%. “We now realise that before we train people, we need to have a sense of what the market wants. Last year we directed training at public works and housing projects and had a far higher placement rate.”
A pilot project in KwaZulu-Natal is also including prior learning as part of the skills profile of unemployed people.
But while the department is breaking new frontiers in these areas, workplace forums have been a massive failure. These forums have been shunned by the unions that are supposed to activate them.
Workplace forums, a pivot of new labour legislation, are intended to enhance labour peace through greater worker participation and an understanding of some of the highs and lows that have an impact on business. They also help to encourage employers to consult with staff.
Pityana says it is too early to say the forums are not working — they are critical to “redistributive relations.
“Adversity between employers and employees has to be tempered, both have to work to save an enterprise and assess its strategic location. Employers need to realise that the more workers buy into an understanding of business operations, the more reasonable they are likely to be about demands.”
He says the department believes movement in the development of workplace forums will be slow initially, “but, we are looking at a five-year strategy”.
Pityana says retrenchments are an area where employers would need to consult with employees early in the process. At present, “employees are informed once the decision has already been taken. Workplace forums supply a window into the thinking of management. And strategic alliances between blue- and white-collar workers are only possible in workplace forums.
“If you look at the mining industry, workplace forums could have worked to the benefit of all employees. If the white- collar staff worked with the blue-collar staff, they could perhaps negotiate better deals with employers.”
But unions have been against them from the start. The Council for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration can also assist, but it is drowning under a heavy caseload of conflict. Labour analyst Brian Allen of Andrew Levy & Associates says: “The very nature of a workplace forum will undermine the activities of a union, and if you look at the specific matters for joint consultation and joint problem-solving, unions do it anyhow.”
Allen said he believed employers were less averse to workplace forums than unions. “There have been a couple of applications to register workplace forums — because they have statutory powers — but the figures are still low.”
Allen and other labour analysts say they cannot see much growth in workplace forums unless the government attempts to force them, unlikely at this stage, leaving that aspect of labour legislation effectively stillborn.
Overall, however, Allen says he believes the Labour Relations Act is working pretty well. He expects the labour market will see “tough wage bargaining as the squeeze is on” from both sides with lower inflation and rising unemployment.
He says1997 was “surprisingly peaceful from a man-days lost point of view. I do not see a major increase in industrial action, my prediction is that we are going to see a drop in unprocedural strikes, strikes will be procedural, there will be an increase in the workload of the council and we will also see the evolvement of jurisprudence around arbitrations . But there will be an increase in retrenchments.”