Parliament should vote against obsession with race
Trade union Solidarity has called on members of Parliament to vote against a preoccupation with race by not approving the amendments to the Employment Equity Act (EEA) today. Solidarity maintains that if these amendments are passed, the EEA will no longer have anything to do with redress, but everything with race.
Johan Kruger, spokesperson for Solidarity, says the amendments will empower the government to enforce the national racial demographics and to discount unique regional differences. ‘Section 42(2) and 42(3) of the amendment bill gives too much arbitrary power to the Minister of Labour.
It will empower the minister to pass regulations that could force any designated employer to make his personnel corps a reflection of the national racial demographics on every job level and in every workplace. Solidarity is conducting various lawsuits against state institutions where this one-sided approach has already been put into practice by the government. The amendments are therefore nothing but an attempt to align legislation with the government's proven obsession with race.'
Kruger says that instead of making the Act more flexible, the amendments do just the opposite. The current EEA requires a number of factors to be taken into account when an employer's compliance with the Act is determined. ‘These factors include: the available pool of suitably qualified people; economic and financial factors; the sector in which the employer carries on business; the availability of vacant positions; and the staff turnover.
Whereas the current Act determines that all these factors must be taken into account in order to determine if an employer complies with the Act, the status of the factors that have not been removed has been lowered and these factors will now only serve as guidelines. This amendment will therefore open the door for race-based employment formulas to be enforced with greater intensity.'
Statement issued by Johan Kruger, Spokesperson: Solidarity, October 15 2013
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
