Department of Employment and Labour Director-General Thobile Lamati espoused the need to revitalise and re-energise efforts designed to fight the retrenchment onslaught head on.
“Whilst most of us are hard at work trying to ensure that our people find and stay working, large scale retrenchments are happening and more are mooted," Lamati cautioned. He said evidence-based solutions “will help us to deal with macro and micro structural conditions so that they do not become obstacles to the positive role of work".
Lamati was addressing a seminar of the Department of Employment and Labour's Directorate: Research, Policy and Planning (RPP) within the Labour Policy and Industrial Relations (LP&IR) branch in Pretoria. The two-day research seminar which started today (Thursday) will unveil findings of research work the department had conducted internally and some that it had commissioned.
The seminar aims to share research findings on:
Lamati emphasised the need to re-configure a new way of working to bring relief to “our people and the desired long-term economic growth. In re-energising our efforts we need evidence to carve the best path to economic growth, these calls for scientific research. Our research unit is responsible to help us navigate that path better and as such they conduct research and liaise with other research institutions in the country to get that best knowledge on these matters".
He said the seminar takes place at the time when the South African economy was taking heavy punches from the 'technical' economic recession announced last week.
“Indeed, the current economy brings realism to many that we need to device urgent measures that will cushion the most vulnerable against the effects of this economic downturn".
“We are not the first to go through a recession and it is also not the first time that South Africa is hit by a recession. On the global front we can recall the Great Depression, which devastated the world in the early 20th century. At the time states had to usher in a new era of state-intervention in the market to lift society out of poverty and unemployment. Our mandate expects us to take a similar course of action," he argued.
Lamati said the causes for SA's current state was multifaceted and these can be attributed to the country's limited ability to attract and keep investors, the economy needing skilled workforce to grow, the economy not being able to create jobs even when it is on growth trajectory.
He said the meeting today and tomorrow was to engage research findings on the labour market trends such as the Fourth Industrial Revolution and decent work principles. He said one of the challenges with the Fourth Industrial Revolution was the bias in literacy levels in the country, suggesting that there will also be a bias in technological acumen; leaving those with low literacy levels technologically marginalised.
“The digital divide in the labour force is likely to increase, as more jobs become centred on technology. Those who are technologically illiterate may be displaced if they cannot adapt quickly to the changing demands of the labour market. If displaced, those are the people who become our responsibility in a painful way as we have to help them find employment; in this sluggish economic growth that task becomes more difficult.
“It is therefore clear that technological advancement has to be accompanied by advancement of skills and education of the work force. The labour that we supply has to be skilled to be able to meet the technological demands of the labour market," emphasised Lamati.
The existing jobs, and new ones for that matter, have to be decent so that “we do not just count numbers of jobs created and retained" while we are creating the so called “working - poor", he said.
For more information contact:
Teboho Thejane
Departmental Spokesperson
082 697 0694
Teboho.thejane@labour.gov.za
© 2019 - The South African Department of Employment & Labour
