Glenda Daniels
If the newly formed Millennium Council, a bilateral between labour and business, modelled on the successful Irish model, works, it would be great for South Africa. Now all we need is the economic growth that followed the formation of the Irish counterpart.
The Irish bilateral, where social dialogue between business and labour yielded results, excluded government.
In the meanwhile, it’s crunch time for the National Education and Development Labour Council (Nedlac). It has come under fire recently for being ineffective before and after the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) national strike, in coming up with effective job-creating strategies. Now it is again under the spotlight with the formation of new talk shops such as the President’s Working Group and the Millennium Council.
Commentators, however, say that while these talk shops are important social dialogue forums, this does not mean that Nedlac should become a rubber stamp – the need for the trilateral institution to be more effective is more crucial now than ever before.
The point of having an institution such as Nedlac is that it can provide the basis for a broad class compromise, the outcome of genuine bargaining between labour, community organisations, government and business. But so far there have been no real results.
However political commentators say the Millennium Council, which is due to meet once a month, should not replace Nedlac.
In creating the Millennium Council, a chamber for labour and business, South Africa is using the model of solving economic problems through a social dialogue forum that took place in Ireland, which led to economic growth, says Centre for Policy Studies political analyst Steven Friedman.
The idea was first mooted by the head of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in South Africa, Charles Nupen, who witnessed the success story of the business and labour bilateral in Ireland. Nupen mooted the idea here, and now in its infancy stage, it looks set to take off.
In Friedman’s view, given the stalemate between government, business and labour, the creation of the bilateral is important to kick-start growth in the country.
“There is a strong feeling in government that there is a lot of bickering going on in Nedlac, that it should be just an advisory body; but in all fairness to Nedlac, it just needs to change to achieve results. All parties need to be there to reach agreement,” Friedman says.
Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of Cosatu, who is also a Nedlac executive member, President’s Working Group and Millennium Council member, feels the view that Nedlac’s power is being eroded by the other forums is a misunderstanding of the inter-relationship and function between these social-dialogue bodies.
“The reason why the Millennium Council and the President’s Working Group [consisting of business, community, labour and government representatives], are so important is that people can talk and find paths and strategies so that issues can be taken to Nedlac. It’s about finding solutions to take to Nedlac, not about replacing Nedlac. But the forums are not the places where deals are cut, Nedlac is where this happens. It does, however, put the pressure on Nedlac to deliver.
‘It’s a big mistake to think that deals can be made in these talk shops. There is a common understanding among all these parties about what they are there for, what the two forums are about. In the Millennium Council business and labour discuss hard issues, compromises, concessions but agreement will only get reached at Nedlac,” Vavi says.
Political analyst Richard Calland from Idasa takes a more critical view of Nedlac. He feels that while the idea of Nedlac is a good one, especially in its design, most people agree it has been weak in terms of its development chamber.
“It became a narrow mediating conflict resolving forum, engaged in troubleshooting, but its objective when it first started was broader. It needs to be dealing with poverty alleviation, and balancing the rights of employed workers and the unemployed,” Calland says.
He adds that the relationship between Parliament and Nedlac has not been properly resolved either. For instance, with the Labour Relations Amendment, it was negotiated at Nedlac, and then at Parliament became a fait accompli.
Players within Nedlac say that all is not lost and that Nedlac has a future. The South African Council of Business’s Kevin Wakeford says that it’s no use pointing fingers at any party as to why Nedlac has not been the success that it should have been. “From business’s point of view as long as the economy gets working that’s all that counts and Nedlac is there to create this common vision. Many countries have pulled it off, if you look at Sweden, Ireland, Germany, where social dialogue was the beginning of a process that led to massive economic growth. We need to stop adversarial relations so that the national interest can benefit from trade-offs to find a co-determination, and move from the boxing ring to marriage,” he says.
Labour convenor at Nedlac Ebrahim Patel says: “We are living in a period where there is an obsessive belief that the market solves all problems, social and economic. But the world doesn’t work like this. It is crucial that there is social engagement, with Cosatu for instance, on job losses and this is why Nedlac is so important.”
He feels that Nedlac needs to shift its focus to co-ordinating the activities of different bodies such as the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, Labour Court and National Skills Board, so that there is more cohesiveness. In addition, Nedlac should start a research wing, following the example of the ILO, and it needs to go global and influence world bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and, at a regional level, play a part in the South African Development Community.
In the meanwhile, Phillip Dexter, executive director of Nedlac, says he is not too worried about the criticisms. “The criticisms stem from a lack of understanding of what Nedlac is. The task of creating jobs is not Nedlac’s task but rather that of the bodies that participate in the forum.
“At our next executive meeting, we will look at the job summit agreement to assess what has and what has not been achieved and why.”