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Monday, 12 August 2019 14:48

Sunday Times reports that the ANC’s poor showing in the May elections will cost more than 120 of its employees their jobs, because fewer MPs means sharply lower parliamentary allowances.

ANC sources in parliament told the Sunday Times that the decision to retrench up to 44 party staff in Cape Town and 80 more at its parliamentary constituency offices across the country was communicated by chief whip Pemmy Majodina at a tense four-hour staff meeting on Wednesday.

Sources said Majodina told the meeting the ANC parliamentary caucus could not afford to retain all its estimated 460 workers.

She said the party was millions of rands poorer in terms of its parliamentary administrative and constituency allowances because of the 23 seats it lost in the May elections, when its support dropped to 57.5% from 62.15% in 2014.

Insiders said Majodina and her team told workers that though the ANC did not retrench in 2014 despite losing 15 seats in that election, the cuts were unavoidable this time round.

But the disgruntled employees are not taking the matter lying down, and challenged Majodina and her deputy Dorris Dlakude and NCOP chief whip Seiso Mohai to do away with luxuries such as phone allowances for senior managers, rented photocopiers in every office in parliament and a leased car for the chief whip.

Majodina also receives a vehicle allowance from parliament as part of her pay package.  She declined to comment, saying consultations were still under way.

Parliamentary spokesperson Moloto Mothapo has indicated that for the current financial year, the legislature has dished out R121m in allowances to all parties on a proportional basis.

These allowances are used to finance party parliamentary operations, including salaries.

This means the ANC would expect R68m a year, down from the R75m a year it has been getting since 2014.

The party’s constituency allowance, which it used to set up 240 public consultation offices across the country, was due to shrink by R17m to R193m this year.

Sources said Majodina told the meeting the party planned to shut at least 38 constituency offices — the number of seats it had lost in the past two elections — meaning at least 80 jobs lost.

The insiders said Dlakude tried to start the meeting on Wednesday by getting staff to sing struggle songs, but the unhappy workers snubbed her.

Staff members who spoke on condition of anonymity said Majodina had told them that all positions would be advertised internally this week and all of them were free to apply, with the process due to be concluded by September 6.

Khaya Xaba, spokesperson for the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union, which represents the majority of ANC employees, said: “As much as we understand the fact that we have lost seats in the last election, our view is that the employer has not canvassed various avenues to avoid these job losses.”

While the ANC parliamentary office is retrenching, the party’s headquarters is beefing up staff. Former ministers from Jacob Zuma’s tenure have been appointed to posts at Luthuli House, party sources said, allegedly at ministerial salaries.

The sources said that Nomvula Mokonyane, who lost her environmental affairs portfolio in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet reshuffle after the May elections, has been named head of campaigns, replacing Senzo Mchunu, the minister of public service & administration.

They said Malusi Gigaba, who held several cabinet portfolios before resigning in November last year, has a post in the policy department, and former co-operative governance deputy minister Andries Nel has joined the party’s legal department.

But while the governing party is going through a jobs bloodbath among parliamentary staff, some of its rivals are hiring after a good showing at the polls.

FF Plus leader Pieter Groenewald said the party would take on more staff after increasing its seats in the National Assembly from four in 2014 to 10 this year.

Groenewald said the party was also opening up new constituency offices in areas where it had not had representation before.

The UDM’s Nqabayomzi Kwankwa said the party had been forced to retrench five support staff members after losing three of its five seats in both houses of parliament in May. Kwankwa said the IFP had agreed to absorb two of the laid-off employees.

IFP chief whip Narend Singh, whose party has increased its seats in parliament from 10 to 14, said the party was hiring more staff, including researchers, and was setting up three more constituency offices.

The original of the above report by Andisiwe Makinana appeared on page 4 of The Sunday Times of 12 August 2019

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Monday, 12 August 2019 12:50

Sunday Independent reports that Cosatu affiliate, the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers’ Union (Ceppwawu), has rejected the essential services committee’s plan to declare the fuel industry an essential service, which would prevent employees from striking.

Ceppwawu has threatened to strike if the production, transport and distribution of fuel is declared an essential service.

“Ceppwawu rejects this outright and the union will organise all union members to mass pickets outside these hearings,” the union said this week.

The committee, which reports to the Department of Labour, announced it would hold hearings across the country next month as part of its investigation.

It told Independent Media the bid to declare the production, transport and distribution of fuel an essential service was a self-initiated investigation in terms of the Labour Relations Act (LRA).

Ceppwawu said unions and their members were being undermined and knew that bosses not only inserted a balloting clause prior to a strike in amendments in the LRA, they now want to prevent workers from even going on strike.

“The union objects and rejects the intention to declare the petroleum industry an essential service, and as we speak, we are mobilising our members and shop stewards on the ground to prepare for a mother of all battles,” Ceppwawu said.

According to the union, fellow Cosatu affiliate, the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union, also faced the same attempt by the government to declare education an essential service and defeated the moves.

Independent Media reported last year that the committee was investigating whether the services “rendered by educators and support staff in basic education including early childhood development” were essential.

Ceppwawu is now planning to mobilise through Cosatu and its affiliates to join it in this fight against the committee’s plans.

“These bosses are not satisfied with exploiting our members at workplaces, now they want our members not to go on legal strikes, by preventing the workers through declaring the petroleum industry an essential service.

“They keep coming for more, like a vampire. We shall meet these bosses in the streets,” warned Ceppwawu.

The committee has also launched a probe into the possibility of altering its September 1997 declaration of correctional services and services required for the functioning of courts an essential service.

The investigation will consider the Constitutional Court decision in 2011 which endorsed the concept of the restrictive interpretation of essential services.

“The net effect of the judgment is that committee designations need to be specific on the services that are essential.

“In line with the above judgment and the committee’s continuous improvement, the committee relooks some of its old designations with a view to narrowly apply them,” the committee said.

The committee said after the investigations have taken place a panel would make a determination into the matter and the process usually took about a month after the conclusion of the investigation.

The original of the above report by Loyiso Sidimba appeared on page 9 of Sunday Independent of 11 August 2019

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Monday, 05 August 2019 07:31

Sunday Times Business Times writes that in the 10 months since launching the jobs summit to create new employment, the government has little to show for it. But as data published by Stats SA this week reflected a rapidly escalating unemployment crisis, the state and its social partners were scrambling to implement the summit’s resolutions.

On Thursday labour, business, civil society and government representatives met with President Cyril Ramaphosa to provide a progress report on resolutions that have been stalled by challenges and regulatory bottlenecks.

But the target of creating 275,000 jobs a year, which the president announced at the summit last year, remains a pipe dream. This week Stats SA data showed the unemployment rate had risen to 29% in the second quarter.

Thulas Nxesi, the employment and labour minister, said of the 77 commitments made at the jobs summit “almost 60% of them need government” intervention. The concerns tabled on Thursday included the security of the electricity supply, restrictions on tourism visas and waiting periods of up to two years to secure water licences.

Nxesi blamed other factors for the lack of momentum following the jobs summit. “We must accept that the momentum of the implementation was … disturbed by the elections; at some point there was restructuring of the ministries and the appointment of new ministers, and following that was the issue of a very tight programme of government.”

The social partners now want to fast track certain resolutions. Monthly progress meetings chaired by Ramaphosa will begin next month.

“We’ve agreed on the issue of clear time frames and milestones,” Nxesi said.

The refined report will be presented to the presidential high-level team by September 2 and will later be made public.

Cas Coovadia, CEO of the Banking Association of SA who represents Business Unity SA, said it was necessary to take “hard discussions, make hard trade-offs and get into the nitty-gritty of tough decisions we need to take as a country”.

Among the issues are retrenchments. Last year labour wanted a moratorium on retrenchments. But Coovadia said this week: “The environment at the moment is such that businesses are concentrating on efficiency just to keep their heads above water.”

On visas, he said business’s view was that “while we’re working on legislation let’s accept that the current visa regulations are inhibitive and let’s say we’re not going to apply them while we change the law. Let’s take quick wins to boost confidence and to boost certainty.”

Cosatu general secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali said labour had arrived at the meeting sceptical but some progress had been made in, for example, concluding a master plan for the textile, clothing and leather footwear value chain, and in the furniture value chain.

He said the labour federation was positive all the problems could be overcome.

Coovadia said: “We believe that we have an administration in place now that is serious about dealing with the issues and I think that we’ve reached a stage where all stakeholders recognise that we are in crisis mode and we need to pull together to address that.”

Predictably, the government’s jobs summit, which was launched with much fanfare last year, has yielded little fruit. Trade unions, the most ardent supporters of the initiative, are beginning to vent their disappointment in the wake of the worst unemployment figures in more than a decade, released this week.

Sceptics of the summit, staged in Midrand in October last year, and of some of its less-than-realistic resolutions probably feel vindicated in an “I told you so” kind of way.

Following news that the unemployment rate had swelled to 29% in the second quarter of this year, Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla criticised the government, saying it was clear it had no plan.

By promising only 2-million jobs over a decade, when SA has the highest unemployment rate worldwide, the country’s leaders had admitted defeat, he said.

An equally frustrated Zwelinzima Vavi, the general secretary of the South African Federation of Trade Unions, said unions had made endless petitions to the government to abandon its current economic policies, and their cries had fallen on deaf ears.

But it is nonsensical for labour unions to cry foul now when, for years, they have contributed to short-sighted policies and failed to provide solutions to the chronic jobs bloodbath or commit to a few serious trade-offs that could alleviate the situation.

In recent years, labour has been at the forefront in trashing the proposals of a perplexed business sector and civil society and tossing these onto the heap of politically unpalatable ideas at a time when SA thought it could afford to maintain and even accelerate populist policies.

But now everyone is panicking, given the ticking timebomb that the elevated youth unemployment rate presents. For those aged 25-34, joblessness at 35.6% is now double the rate of middle-aged people.

The government’s ideas are floundering and it should reconsider proposals, even radical ones, that would lead to job creation.

In 2016, the Centre for Development and Enterprise suggested export-processing zones with access to dutyfree imports, presumably of inputs, and exemption from some legislation to significantly reduce the cost of labour.

Employers would determine wages and working conditions with employees without affecting wage conditions elsewhere in SA.

As Stats SA reveals, the issue is that a large section of the workforce is unskilled and unprepared for the fourth industrial revolution. Close to a third of the 21,000 jobs created in the second quarter of this year were in elementary and domestic work positions. Desperation to put food on the table may have also forced some skilled people into low-income jobs.

What is clear is that the chickens have come home to roost, and trade unions and the government have to abandon fruitless ideas and review the “decent work agenda” of the 1990s which priced unskilled workers out of the market.

For those aged 25-34, joblessness is at 35.6%, double the rate of the middle-aged

The original of the above report by Asha Speckman appeared on page I of Sunday Times Business Times of 4 August 2019

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Wednesday, 17 July 2019 11:53

Sowetan reports that emotions ran high at the Middelburg government mortuary where the families of eight of the nine people who died in a road crash arrived to have DNA samples taken for the identification process of the burnt bodies.

The crash victims died on Friday on the N11, the day they all started work at a coal mine in the Mpumalanga town. MEC for community safety, security and liaison Gabisile Shabalala said the process would take two weeks to finalise as it needed blood samples from relatives for conclusive DNA results.

“We have spoken to the forensic investigators to try to speed up the process of identification of the deceased. This process will take about two weeks to finish, therefore we will know when the deceased will be laid to rest.”

The eight victims have been identified as Majahonke Madonsela, 33, Mduduzi Mundalamo, 30, Bafana Shabangu, 34, Handsome Rasimphi, 27, Fano Chiya, 35, Mthunzi Nkosi, 35, Abel Pitso, 38, and Jones Tshukudu, 37. The ninth person’s identity has not been verified. Madonsela’s mother Martha Nzinisa told Sowetan on the day of the crash, she waited for him to come home so they could celebrate the news that he had found a new job. “My son had not been getting proper jobs but piece jobs. When he told us that on Friday morning he’s going for an induction to start a new job on Monday, we were very happy. He even told his girlfriend that they were going to celebrate in the evening.

“I waited for him to come home and didn’t know that he was dead until on Saturday morning,” Nzinisa said. “My heart is very sore. I thought our lives would get better after he got the job.” MEC for public works, roads and transport Gillion Mashego said human error and driver’s impatience were to blame for the crash. Several people were also injured.

“They [deceased] had just started new jobs. The were going to change their families’ lives and be able to put something on the table. So, it’s a very painful situation looking at the joblessness in the country, mostly among the youth. “This accident was caused by human error. You see, South Africans are impatient. In this accident, a driver of a bakkie overtook [a truck] and distracted the driver of the taxi [which hit the truck]. The bakkie itself went into a ditch.”

The original of the above report by Mandla Kjhosa was published on page 8 of Sowetan of 17 July 2019

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Monday, 15 July 2019 14:27

The Sunday Independent reports that thousands of employees of state-owned entities are fearful their salaries will not be paid this month unless government steps in and bails out the ailing entities with billions of rand from taxpayers.

While state entities such as the SABC, Denel and SAA downplayed the financial crisis, workers’ unions were concerned salaries and jobs would be affected and vowed to fight for their members.

SABC is reportedly seeking a cash injection of R3.2 billion, Eskom needs R17bn, while SAA requested R4bn, and Denel wants R2.8bn. As a shortterm solution, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said government would look into the national contingency reserve account, using the Special Appropriations Bill set to be tabled in Parliament in the next two weeks, and bail out the ailing institutions.

Communication Workers Union (CWU) general secretary, Aubrey Tshabalala, blamed national treasury, the minister of communications and the SABC’s board for failing to resolve the dire financial situation at the national broadcaster. Tshabalala said CWU had requested to be part of the turnaround strategy discussions because they have ideas on how to save the SABC, especially around regulations on sporting rights and other services.

On Wednesday, Communications Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams confirmed to Parliament, during her department’s budget vote speech, that the public broadcaster was set to receive interim financial relief from the government within the next 10 days. However, Ndabeni-Abrahams insisted this was dependent on the SABC meeting conditions set out by the government.

The announcement came after reports that Ndabeni-Abrahams and the national treasury had turned down the ailing broadcaster’s application for a financial bailout.

Speaking during the budget vote this week, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan tabled a plan to turn around SEOs and emphasised that boards would be held accountable for the financial and operational performance and repositioning of SOE’s.

“After a decade of mismanagement, negligible board and executive fiduciary accountability for poor performance, malfeasance that enabled state capture, and rampant corruption at our biggest SOEs, many are in deep financial difficulties and will be unable to trade their way out of their difficulties,” said Gordhan.

Head of International Liaison for Solidarity Movement, Jaco Kleynhans, said they were concerned about the future of their members as state-owned entities were mismanaged.

“None of the employees are secured or safe in these entities because of their financial challenges,” said Kleynhans.

“The government can bail out these entities but the major problem is mismanagement and corruption. They haven’t managed according to business principles and because of that there’s no sustainability in these companies,” lamented Kleynhans.

National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi-Majola said the union remained in the dark on the situation at Eskom.

“There has been no formal engagements with Eskom regarding the situation at the power utility, and as Numsa, we are hearing of the developments at Eskom and its future from the media. We were hoping that Sona would give directions in terms of what was going to happen, but the president didn’t outline any details.

“What we know is that the unbundling is going ahead and that they will appoint a chief restructuring officer. Beyond that we don’t know anything,” she said.

Hlubi-Majola said the lack of communication between Numsa and the power utility had raised frustrations and anxiety among workers who were concerned about their future and that of the power utility.

South Africa Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) spokesperson Zanele Sabela echoed the sentiments of the other unions, calling on government to bail out ailing SOEs.

“State-owned companies are supposed to provide employment and skills, and help the government eliminate the challenges such as poverty and getting rid of inequality in this country,” she said.

The original of the above Sunday Independent report by Manyane Manyane appeared on page 4 of The Sunday Independent of 14 July 2019

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