Glenda Daniels
Against the backdrop of a threatened 2385 job losses at Telkom by year-end and further job cuts in the public works department, the labour movement has slammed the government for not implementing its “social plan”.
Union sources say the public works department is expected to shed about 10000 jobs, while another 10000 may be lost at Spoornet over the next five years.
The private sector also continues to haemorrhage formal employment. The National Union of Metalworkers says Iscor plans to shed 2500 jobs this month when the company is separated into steel and mining entities.
Labour says the social plan guideline drawn up by the Department of Labour is theoretically solid. In practice, however, phase one of the plan the prevention of retrenchments has virtually been skipped.
The social plan proposal emerged from the Presidential Job Summit in 1998, as a way of mitigating the social ravages of job loss.
The plan had three envisaged phases: turnaround and redeployment strategies to avoid job losses; a retrenchment counselling service to assist in further training; and the creation of employment opportunities by encouraging small and medium entrepreneurs.
The labour department acknowledges there have been problems in implementing the plan. Director General Rams Ramashia says “various challenges continue to be posed, such as late notification by employers of impending retrenchments. This is a missed opportunity for employees who could have benefited from the re-skilling offered by the department.”
He says successes have been recorded in each phase of the plan. These were, however, isolated given that the social plan concept was relatively new.
The Congress of South Africna Trade Unions’s (Cosatu) Neva Makgetla complains that employers systematically ignore phase one of the social plan. “It is not clear that the Department of Labour has the capacity to provide the training it promised. Generally, the problem lies in the failure of employers including state-owned enterprise and the public service itself to implement the proposals rigorously.”
Social plan task teams have been established in mining, clothing and public and state-owned enterprises. Discussions are under way between the labour department and the public service administration on the establishment of a public sector team.
Cosatu says employers are using the social plan to facilitate retrenchments rather than treating them as a measure of last resort.
“[The] government is not ensuring private employers follow relevant procedures before and after retrenchments take place,” says the federation’s Moloto Mothapo. Where a social plan was in place “timeliness, counselling, and an overall proactiveness towards projects” were not observed.
Another Cosatu concern is the relationship between employers and retrenchees, which virtually comes to an end on the termination of employment. It is difficult for employers to trace retrenchees if jobs are subsequently created at the enterprise.
Meanwhile, a whopping 8244 new jobs will be created through the Cosatu Job Creation Trust.
The federation has approved 29 job-creating projects, it said this week. The trust has R84318860 in its account. The money was collected last year through donations from workers sacrificing one day of wages.
Proposals for various projects amounted to 1022172 new jobs, but Cosatu says all 3307 project applications would require R4,5-billion. This means that some projects had to be turned down.
Some of the projects are HIV/Aids-awareness programmes, poultry farming, candle making, block making, construction, chicken farming, recycling, catering and gardening services, fruit and vegetable projects, welding, library and crche-building projects, knitting and carpentry projects.