Battle lines are drawn over the Employment Equity Bill, write Marion Edmunds and Mungo Soggot
All sides of the political spectrum dug in this week for what threatens to be the biggest parliamentary battle between now and the next elections: the government’s drive to take on white economic privilege.
The Employment Equity Bill, due to be tabled later this year, looks set to propel the racial question from the streets to the top of the political agenda.
The outcome of the parliamentary fight over the Bill will be the clearest indication yet of the opposition’s ability to put a brake on the mass-based ruling party. Business and white employees will look to the opposition to represent their interests if their own lobbying fails to substantially change the Bill.
The Bill effectively forces companies to run aggressive affirmative-action policies. However, it stops short of stipulating quotas.
The opposition, still reeling from President Nelson Mandela’s racially charged barrage at the African National Congress’s conference in Mafikeng, rushed at the opening of Parliament this week to attack the government for its racial drive.
The National Party said the Bill would have slotted into apartheid’s legislative battery. The Democratic Party warned that the Bill would saddle the taxpayer with another expensive bureaucracy.
In response, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, accused the opposition of racism and stymying affirmative action, saying the parties were seeking to “whip up a backlash against measures that were very moderate”.
One of the Bill’s drafters, attorney Urmila Bhoola of Cheadle Thompson and Haysom, says the Bill’s opponents are distorting the truth in claiming it forces companies to comply with quotas, as is the case in the United States.
She says the Bill will oblige companies to work with their employees on a plan to make their staff profile less white. This plan, and the companies’ efforts to honour it, will be scrutinised every year by the Department of Labour and a special bureaucracy.
But Bhoola says the Bill stipulates that staff goals will differ from company to company, “depending on what is realistic and achievable, given the skills shortage in South Africa”. This means an engineering firm which employs a team of 75 engineers cannot be expected to fulfil a quota of 50 black engineers because of the shortage of black engineers in South Africa.
Bhoola says it is unlikely, as the business lobby suggests, that the government will impose heavy fines on companies if they fail to show a workforce that is “broadly representative of the demographics of South Africa” within five years of the Act being passed. She says the Bill will rather oblige companies to show that they have a reasonable plan in place to make the staff as racially balanced as possible, as quickly as possible.
The Bill “requires employers to make sure they have diverse workforces that broadly represent the population. However, other factors are also relevant, such as the skills pool. This takes into account the enormous challenges of development and training which face employers. The aim of the Bill is not simply to force employers to crunch numbers.”
Tony Twine, an economist at the Johannesburg-based Econometrix, feels the Bill does not promote economic growth. He says it is the latest “cog in a sequence of labour legislation” that puts “a heavy onus on businesses and protects various workers’ rights without leaving business much flexibility to decide its own future”.
Twine says the Bill, by implication, imposes quotas on companies. “You end up in the position that every market researcher [is] looking for a one-legged black female … You end up in stupid situations.”
He says the government has not explained what rights white people have if they are forced out of jobs to make way for black people who are needed in order to meet company targets.
The government made it clear this week that its desire to engineer racial equality goes beyond the workplace. Minister of Sport and Recreation Steve Tshwete said he is seriously considering plans, possibly even legislation, to take race-based recruitment policies on to the sportsfield.