Distinguished stakeholders
Ladies and gentlemen
Dear colleagues
It is ten months since I assumed the responsibility of being the
Director General of the Department of Labour. During this time I
have learned a number things and key among these is, the understanding
of the power of collective wisdom when put into purposeful use. I
have seen different public entities within the Ministry of Labour (MoL)
at different times doing what can be categorised as the best
practice. Concurrently I have noticed others struggling to
overcome the same challenges that the sister entity has acquired the
best results in. Similarly I have observed us making our
individual inputs in the labour market and our impact has been equally
disintegrated in terms of impact. It is out of this circumstance
that the questions came to the fore:
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Are we well aligned as the different formations under the Ministry
of Labour?
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Are we exploiting to the maximum the opportunity of learning from
one another?
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Are our individual mission statements, policies and programmes
helping us to contribute meaningfully towards realisation of the broad
vision set by the government for the entire society?
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In short are we equal to the challenges facing the labour market
today?
Answers to these questions call for close understanding of the
challenges facing SA generally and the challenges facing the labour
market in particular. In July 2005 the Cabinet Lekgotla embarked
on a thorough going introspection and forward-looking analysis of where
we are as a country vis a? vis the capacity to deliver to meet the
expectations of the SA citizenry. Among the key decisions of this
lekgotla was a decision to put SA on a fast economic growth path.
The Deputy President of SA was tasked to drive this initiative.
This has since culminated at what has been named the Accelerated and
Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGI-SA) which was adopted
by the cabinet two weeks ago. The pressure of time may have
allowed limited consultation towards shaping this strategy.
However, our innovative thinking is called upon at implementation
stages. In a nutshell ASGI-SA has the following objectives to be
realised by 2014:
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Reduce unemployment by half
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Reduce poverty by half
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Provide the skills required by the economy and the whole
country
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Achieve an economic growth rate of 4.5 % p.a. between 2005 and
2009, and an average rate of 6% between 2010 and 2014.
Without belittling anything else we are currently engaged in, the
government is calling upon us wherever we are, in our different
formations to put ASGI-SA objectives as our priority number one.
The question is, are we equal to this task. In my view this calls
for critical examination of the environment in which we operate, in a
manner that allows us select a few strategic areas which will have
massive impact in addressing the key challenges of our times. The
Presidency has challenged us to think out of the box. Allow me to
restate some of the views which featured prominently in the recent
economic growth and labour market reform discourse.
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The SA labour laws are viewed by some observers as rigid and
counterproductive as far as economic growth and employment creation are
concerned. They make it difficulty for business to do business
especially small business.
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National skills development programme is said to be incoherent and
with vaguely defined alignment with the skills needs of the
economy.
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Employment equity is obsolete and can scare away investors.
It has served to allianate some of the young white South
Africans.
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The changing nature of work organisation has led to unavoidable
internationalisation of production processes. It has
disaggregated workers into ?core? skilled workers and ?Peripheral?
non-core unskilled workers. The latter are more likely to be the
centre part of the rising levels of vulnerability whose responsibility
the employer refuses to take. Vulnerability has seen shifting of
responsibilities and risks away from the work place to the family and
government.
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The dichotomy of the rising worker vulnerability and social
protection versus the ideal of a reduced number of people depending on
social grants.
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Our social dialogue structures are said to have been reduced to
mere debating society which does go beyond conceptual discourse and get
social partners to realisation of concrete programmes like Growth and
Development Summit goals.
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Our bargaining and dispute resolution structures are viewed as
being highly legalistic and they become an added burden on the users
and participants than a solution.
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Productivity is closely linked with enterprise competitiveness
locally and globally, global competitiveness is linked to economic
growth and employment creation yet our productivity structures are left
in limbo with limited resources and incoherent alignment with the
players in the economy.
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Occupational Health and Safety silently consumes 3-4% of the
country?s GDP yet it remains a competency managed in a disintegrated
manner. Some in the corporate world see OHS as an economic burden
to be avoided at all cost. Labour inspectors are seen as policing
force than expert advisors.
I have talked like an auditor, almost exclusively raising the
negatives as if nothing positive exists in the areas mentioned
above. The diction too may have been provocative. These are
raised not for anybody to defend themselves but for us to say, have we
communicated properly the services we render? Is our human
resource capacity equal to the task at hand? Are our ablest
people deployed where they are needed most. Are the institutions
we use as vehicle to realise the set goals so constituted that they
facilitate delivery to the expectations of our clients?
Individually as organisations and collectively as the MoL we must have
honest answers to these questions as we ready ourselves for the
implementation of the ASGI-SA.
The cabinet in adopting the ASGI-SA challenged us to improve the
quality of education, improve the output of the Further Education
and Training (FET) Colleges and other tertiary institutions, to use
FETs to develop scarce, advanced and artisan skills. The cabinet
went further to implore us to review the labour market policies and
re-engineer the SETAs. Furthermore we are asked to facilitate
immigration of scarce skills where necessary while we develop our
own. Finally we are directed to align skills development to
industrial strategy, infrastructure and service delivery.
To further guarantee the success of Human Resource Development
Strategy the cabinet resolved to establish a Joint Council on Priority
Skills Acquisition (JCOPSA) whose membership includes government and
state owned enterprises (SOEs); business and labour under the
chairpersonship of the Deputy President. The President has called
upon the nation to initiate massive projects capable of impacting
positively on the lives of the people of SA. Readily available in
the current budget cycle is R320 billion dedicated to infrastructure
development. Some of the said massive infrastructure projects
have already been identified throughout the spheres of
government. With these and other sector investment strategies
getting more clearly defined our role in skills development and other
interventions towards economic growth and employment creation is better
focused.
What is clear is that none of us acting in isolation will be able to
tackle these challenges. We have a duty to identify partners
within government, and from without government in the private sector
and in the communities.
In the Ministry of Labour our starting point is to establish a forum
where all the associated institutions share ideas and explore
innovative ventures in an effort to realise the labour market goals we
set ourselves to achieve.
We must foster strategic partnerships and enhance common
understanding of how we can deal with the current labour market
challenges and be able to have an aggregate impact of the services we
render.
The more I look at these challenges and the strategies lined up to
conquer them the more I feel that indeed we live in interesting
times. More so it becomes when we begin to act in unity and unite
in action.
I thank you
