A Johannesburg metro police campaign to recruit white, coloured and Indian members could be part of the slow death of affirmative action, the trade union Solidarity said on Thursday.
The scrapping of affirmative action — and discrimination against young white people — at entry-level is ”a rapidly growing trend”, said Solidarity’s deputy general secretary, Dirk Hermann.
Apart from the Johannesburg metro police, several mining houses and large businesses are actively recruiting white people at lower levels, he said.
”This means that affirmative action is slowly dying from the bottom up.”
Solidarity saw the move as the first step in a process of exempting young people from affirmative action.
However, Hermann said it should not only be scrapped at the lower levels of the labour market, but throughout.
At the moment — in the metro police — minorities are being given the message that they are being recruited, but should not expect promotion.
”The steps that are contained in the Employment Equity Act to create a non-discriminatory environment should be applied by the metro police,” he said.
”Minorities must not only be recruited, they should also be offered career opportunities.”
Speaking at a Workers’ Day rally in Johannesburg on Tuesday, Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana said employment equity is ”here to stay”.
”It will stay until we have eradicated those unfair and abusive labour practices that relegate our mothers and young women in the remotest areas of our country to invisibility.
”It will remain not only to address these discriminatory practices that still exist today, but chiefly because it makes business sense.
”It makes business sense to escalate the achievement of employment equity targets to the chief executive officers and squarely into their business strategies and away from the ambit of middle management in order to give it the prominence that it deserves.
”It will also remain because it fits in the achievement of the goals set by AsgiSA [the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa], to ensure that growth is shared,” he said.
He said equity is not only about protection, but about creating a labour regime that seeks to address the industry’s demands and respond positively to the requirements of job creation and poverty eradication.
Employment equity is the legislation through which affirmative action is enforced. However, it does not only apply to race, but gender and disability, among other things. — Sapa