Speech by Ian Ollis, DA Shadow Minister of Labour in the Department of Labour Budget Vote Debate, Parliament, July 15 2014
The ANC fails the employed and unemployed equally
15 July 2014
The ANC can't create jobs. Since 2009, The South African economy has lost 1.8 million jobs as the ANC doesn't know how to create jobs or grow an economy.
Those EPWP opportunities are not a long term solution - Poor people will take them because there is nothing else. EPWP jobs amount to 60 days of earning R60 per day and then everyone is back on the street: unemployed! The ANC can't even create the economic environment for the private sector to create real jobs as we have witnessed in horror over the past 5 years of President Zumas Administration.
What the ANC has created is an environment in which struggling workers are pitted against struggling companies in a race to the bottom, resulting in the collapse of the mining and manufacturing industries. That is the ANC's jobs legacy.
Revelations by the CCMA in Parliament show that labour instability in the mining sector should be attributed to systemic failure by the ANC government.
The Social wage has collapsed. Where are the RDP houses and good schools in mining communities? Where is the access to water, electricity, sanitation and access to social amenities for the families of mine workers? Where are the roads in the rural areas?
Wage disputes and community social demands are coalescing. The basic minimum wage will no longer suffice because low paid workers have to pay the social wage themselves after the ANC government has failed to deliver services in those communities that need it most.
SA labour relations are back in the 1980's where workers campaigned, with progressive employers, to remove the government, and not just for a salary increase. The honeymoon years of the late 90's and early 2000's are over. Nedlac, Bargaining Councils and the CCMA are not enough, Minister Oliphant, the ANC has to deliver basic services, health and education too.
Workers become angry when they see others reaping the rewards of corruption and connections with the ANC government and they, the workers, cannot afford transport home from Marikana to rural Pondoland or pay the family medical bills or food for their families who are struggling under the scourge of HIV and AIDS.
As Afzul Soodebaar of the CCMA put it, "Even the R12500 minimum wage will not make the problem go away".
The violence around Marikana and the strike in the platinum sector was not a labour dispute, but in fact socio-economic frustration with this ANC government, which found a fault line in an employment relationship resulting in a labour dispute about wages.
Against this background, it makes workers even more angry to discover that the ANC Deputy President, who had shares in those mines, apparently encouraged the police to use force, that the ANC aligned NUM shop stewards awarded themselves extras that rock drilllers and other workers were not entitled to and that the new ANC Minister of Mineral Resources, according to the media, also has millions of Rands in shares in platinum mines, while mine workers can't get R12500 because the world economy is slow and platinum prices are not high enough.
Just remember when you blame mine owners, that a number of them sit in the ANC cabinet! Workers are giving the ANC a bloody nose because the ANC has not delivered properly on the social wage. Speaker, the ANC doesn't know how to create jobs and they are ruining the few jobs that we do have.
Just in case the EFF thinks that the ANC are the only corrupt ones, let's realise that Hon Malema and his party fare no better. Dear EFF we see your R250 000 Breitling watches under your red overalls... the R2500 shirts, the Armani suits and the Gucci shoes!
Using the poor to fund EFF high flying life styles, with your kids in private schools, the luxury BMW's and the R16 million houses in Sandton are not the trappings of Nationalisation nor a sign of care for the poor. They are the signs of an up and coming connected elite who want to rule in place of the current corrupt Elite. Why is it that Honorable Malema needs other people to pay his tax to SARS, while he lives the high life with such expensive clothes? How much are EFF MP's being forced to pay on Hon Juju's unpaid taxes? Speaker the Economic Freedom Fighters are the ultimate racial nationalists using workers aprons as a fig leaf to hide their conspicuous consumption while the blood of workers dries on the hillside of Marikana. Let's stop the pretence.
However, when we look at this budget of the Labour Department, we cannot see the ANC caring for workers or the unemployed either. The budget for the Inspection and Enforcement Services is down by R59.5 million or 13.6%. That means less petrol in the cars to take labour inspectors to check safety conditions in the work place; less enforcement of the country's labour laws.
Instead the money has gone into a massive IT contract to replace the disastrous contract with Siemens which never worked properly. After about R2.2 billion we had to dig our way out of that contract. Now according to the Mail & Guardian, the Minister has entered into a new IT contract with Accenture for R1.9billion the full details of which remain as murky as a swamp.
This tender became a closed tender which was negotiated with only 1 company and the only company in the room negotiating was one which had a close relative of the Minister as a director, a fact the minister failed to disclose according to media reports. Now minister, even if the public protector can't actually find the smoking gun, how can workers any longer trust the ANC to be morally above board when this kind of thing is going on?
To make things worse, that new IT system is still not working more than a year later with the Compensation Fund now declaring delays in its launch. In 2009 the IT system was not working, In 2010 there were delays in the implementation of the IT system. In 2011 there were IT problems in the Compensation Fund and the rural labour centres. In 2012, in 2013 and now in 2014, after billions of Rands have been spent, the IT system is not working yet again.
The Auditor-General noted this and gave the Compensation Fund a disclaimer of opinion - the worst possible audit outcome - from the AG.
The Training Layoff Scheme is not working for workers either, Minister. Billions are lying idle in this fund because it's too cumbersome to approve training. As a result, very few companies apply for the funding and even fewer get their approval. In the past year, when Mercedes Benz shut down for 8 months for retooling, the economy of East London, in Buffallo City, almost shut down entirely, because all the supplier companies could not get the Training Layoff Scheme approved for their workers in time. This meant 8 large companies, collectively the backbone of the East London economy almost had to lay off their entire staff for 8 months while Mercedes was retooling.
But that's not where the problems in this bumbling department end. The Nedlac Audit Committee had to perform a special Audit investigation of Nedlac 2011/2012 financial year after many cases of irregular spending occurred. The figures involved are reportedly over R1 Million for an entity with a very small budget. The audit itself reportedly cost R160 000 and was handed to the Minister in September 2012.
The minister definitely had the report since August 2013 but it appears to have gone to doggy heaven - we've never heard of it again!
It details alleged widespread irregular spending during the term of CEO Herbert Mkhize. But minister why have you been hiding the report? Why did everyone on the investigation have to sign confidentiality agreements and why are you not making the findings known? What does Nedlac and the minister have to hide? Did staff illegally charge flights and travel claims to Nedlac? Did the CEO at the time pay himself bonuses without approval? Were vehicle costs improperly charged to Nedlac? Were leave entitlements improperly paid out in cash? If there is nothing to hide, and the allegations against Mr. Mkhize are false, why not just release the report and exonerate everyone involved? Is the fact that Mr. Mkhize is now the Minister's personal advisor after leaving Nedlac, the reason that Minister Oliphant is covering up this damning audit?
While we are on the subject of special advisors to the minister, we have yet another case very close to the Minister. Minister, why is your Chief Director in Legal Services, Advocate N. Pasha, still on suspension, costing the taxpayer millions? He was first suspended on 24th October 2011. If there were allegations against him, why have they not been investigated? Why no disciplinary action? If there is no case, why has Advocate Pasha not been cleared and re-instated? Why must poor people's tax money continue to fund the salary of someone on permanent suspension if there is no case to answer?
In fact minister, is it not true that your department is in serious trouble with the Auditor General again and is it not true that he is about to declare 10's of millions of Rands in fruitless and wasteful expenditure in your department, this year, spent on these kinds of messes?
Speaker the DA has a better way. After cleaning up the mismanagement and corruption in this department, the DA would create the environment for rapid Job creation that the ANC cannot provide and bring an end to the violence during strikes and pickets. South Africa needs an environment that would encourage investment and economic growth.
1. The DA would completely redraft the ridiculous Employment Equity Regulations, which are currently so bad that they are unimplementable and unconstitutional. Instead of "Jimmy Manyi"-style insults to Coloured and Indian South Africans, we need regulations, which are simple to implement, encourage transformation without enforced national demographics and will pass constitutional muster;
2. We would cut the red tape for SMME's by implementing thresholds below which micro enterprises would be exempt from skills levies, the SETA programmes and onerous bargaining council requirements;
3. The DA would and reintroduce secret balloting and a standard threshold for union recognition across all industries that cannot be manipulated by majority unions or employers. Even the President in his budget speech pointed out the need to review strike legislation;
4. We would review Visa regulations to make it easier to attract scarce skills, as the NDP asks us to do. The latest visa requirements have damaged South Africa's credibility as a hub of economic growth;
5. The DA will introduce amendments to the Labour relations act and the Gatherings act to make unions and political parties liable for strike and picket violence;
6. We would implement the full-scale youth wage subsidy, and not the government's watered down version; and
7. And finally, the DA would simplify dismissal procedures for non-performance and misconduct - especially for smaller firms - NDP requires it for the country's success.
Speaker the DA knows how to create jobs and grow this economy. The ANC doesn't, and in the end, that's what really matters.
I thank you.
Issued by the DA, July 15 2014
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