Parliament has been holding public hearings on proposals to curtail, and possibly ban, the operations of labour brokers. A marathon two-day session saw lots of talking between the parties but not much evidence that there was much listening going on.
The minister of labour has been unhappy with the rise in the use of labour brokers for the last few years.
The pledge to ban labour broking was included in the ANC’s manifesto for the last election, which gave Mdladlana the platform he needed to push through the necessary changes in labour laws.
Before a change in the law can be affected, the correct procedure is for the National Assembly’s portfolio committee on labour to hold public hearings on the matter.
For two days this week, the apartheid-era parliamentary chamber was the home to lots and lots of talking about labour brokers, or temporary employment services, as they prefer to be known.
The tone was set early on the first day after the first presentation gave some insight into the activities of highly skilled engineers and project mangers and their interactions with labour brokers. For the skilled workers the labour broker acts more like a Hollywood agent. The broker knows the going rate for scarce, skilled workers and ensures that their client gets the best terms and conditions.
After the presentation Alina Rantsolase MP, current ANC caucus chair and former unionist, lead the charge. She outlined a number of exploitative practices that can happen in the workplace, from immediate dismissal without severance pay, to abuse of health and safety procedures. Why hadn’t his presentation dealt with those issues she asked?
The presenter, who works with highly skilled employees, could bring no relevant examples to the hearings. He was left to speculate about the practices of domestic worker agencies, which he had some scant knowledge of in his private life.
It didn’t give the impression that committee members were interested in learning about the topic. They had already formed their views on the practice and were intent on telling the presenters what the facts were rather than trying to learn from them.
It is a form of 21st century slavery and cannot be reformed — it must be destroyed completely. That statement was made on the morning of the first day and there was no evidence that anyone’s opinion was changed by the end of the hearings.
The only humour in the two days occurred when Kevin Cowley from labour broker federation Capes said that brokers were not about exploiting people but were actually in the business of skills. For some reason laughter broke out across the chamber!
Cowley continued that calls for the banning of labour broking were completely out of touch with reality! The ANC members of the committee (who hold the majority) didn’t appear to hear anything from the labour brokers that would cause them to change their commitment to banning labour broking. It looks like Cowley’s reality could be changing soon!
If we want to be consitent, then all industries with exploitive labour practices must be shut down. Let’s do the taxi industry next…
The first articulate description of wage slavery was perhaps made by Simon Linguet in 1763:
The slave was precious to his master because of the money he had cost him… They were worth at least as much as they could be sold for in the market… It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat… It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him… what effective gain [has] the suppression of slavery brought [him ?] He is free, you say. Ah! That is his misfortune… These men… [have] the most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is, need. They must therefore find someone to hire them, or die of hunger. Is that to be free?
I was in those hearings and they were a joke – my favourite part was when the Chairperson, Ms Yengeni, said that the ANC had fought for the right of freedom of expression, and it would allow that right to people present, but it would not listen. It was a waste of time for all those who had travelled there to present and the ANC should not have wasted their money.
well, it seems to me that parliamentarians are [again] too dumb to figure out the differences between high-end and low-end labor broking, the problems endemic to both levels, and are determined to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
i never thought i would say this, but if trev or prav or even tito don’t step in, parliament is going to shoot the country in the foot.
banning labor brokers? sheer idiocy. there are far more positives than negatives to the labor broking industry, and they’re going to toss them out.
but doing everything backwards seems to be the order of the day: there are far more negatives than positives to the anc, and yet they are still running the place.
Isn’t it amazing, I wonder what will happen when a teacher is sick and replacement is needed,or a doctor in away on a conference , I suppose operations will have to wait, and as for those seasonal jobs such as fruit picking, well it is simple, the farmer must employ these people full time for the whole year.The words baby,bath-water and throw out seem to come to mind.
My contribution on this matter is okay, its the government that remains with the responsibility to make credible and attractive an environment so that the country attracts fixed investments so that there’s more people employed on a permanent basis (with all the pecks in the terms and conditions of the LRA), viz we need to give a special focus on the manufacturing the sector of our economy.
Companies outsource because they are cutting cost reasons? 1. there are none profit making sectors in the business and 2. because the type of business they are e.g. specific time frames set to their jobs i.e. your construction type etc. this is dependent on the footprint of the business itself in the industry of cos.
nevertheless, the LRA has a provision for this circumsance: Chapter 12, Impact of the act on particular employees, which justify the existance of labor brokers, that they are also subject to the provisions of the LRA,
So minister, please strategise on toughned monitoring and enforcement of the LRA or you and the left must somehow help the government bring in fixed investment that will see the need to permanently employ the people, if you discard labor brokers how else will you ensure that people are taking something home every now and then, the contractors that are busy today around our townships on housing and roads projects are meant to exist on this concept by virtue of their existance, help me understand that part..
Banning a business practice is un-constitutional in a free country. People would be limited in their choices to choose whether they want to work via a union or via a broker !
If we go down this path then we might as well forget about being a Constitutional Republic and head off in the Communist direction where the state limits peoples choice to whatever the government dictates
The problem is not “human trafficking”, as continually implied by the Minister of labour, but rather:
“…labour brokers which are not necessarily operating in accordance with labour law prescripts.” (http://www.pmg.org.za/programmes/hearings)
If there are companies which do not comply with any aspects of the current legislation they can be, indeed must be, charged. But neither the Minister of labour nor the Unions have done this. Why have we not seen even one ‘case’ being brought to the courts?
We are of the opinion that the Minister of labour does not, or cannot, or will not use the current legislation to honour his responsibility towards the employed people of South Africa. We should all be looking at ways to work with our President in creating many more jobs. Outlawing the practice of Labour Brokering in South Africa carries the risk of reducing the number of gainfully employed people in South Africa. We must question the wisdom of this especially during the current economic recession.
I have absolutely no sympathy.
They changed the labour laws to allow “contract labour” to get rid of whites by putting them on short term contracts instead of giving them normal employment, and labour brokers slipped through the cracks.
I for one dont know the advantages and disavantages of labour brokers all I hear in this article and comments are the attacks on the public hearings. Mr hammond can you spell these out for us.
Joe, it isn’t as bad as you think. Temporary work won’t be banned so companies can still employ temp staff for seasonal jobs, or in fact any jobs. The point is just that the company must employ then, not a third party.
thobekani..
“no profit making sectors” are you *serious*?
i have worked for temp agencies [ie labor brokers] on four different continents. more importantly, i have worked, at one time, for the same agency [kelly] on three of them. to say that there are so profit making sectors is a clear indication that you’re not too up to date with these things.
in many cases, the point of a labor broker is threefold, but it seems that parliament is only thinking about one of them: the companies’ not wanting to pay uif and benefits to the contract employee.
they seem to forget about two other things: a) bringing in people just for one particular project and b) someone who *wants* to move around, getting work experience in a lot of different sectors and fields.
and as i wrote this, i realised that i worked for another temp company on three different continents. and, by the way, while i have only worked for manpower [www.manpower.com] in the usa, that is the largest employer in the world after the chinese army — a laboor broker. not a brick and mortar company.
but let’s not let facts get in the way — parliament doesn’t cars, so why should you?
oh yeah, my spelling is going to be off for the next fortnight or so; i’ve cut my fingers, right across the pads. ouch.
…
alan: the time that a company has to spend looking for suitable candidates is time taken away from any particular project. labor brokers already have interviewed candidates on their books, so when the company realises that they need 300 people to start in a week’s time due to a project that’s just come up or a contract they have just won — and you don’t go out hiring people *until* you secure the contract — it can call up 10 labor brokers and say “we need 30 people to start on day [x] for [y] amount of time” and then the brokers provide.
this is a serious bit that is definitely being missed. why is that? should companies hire people while they’re in the tender process and just let them go when they don’t get the tenders? because that’s what will happen should labor brokers be banned.
it’s another example of parliamentarians not thinking things through. [the less polite way is to say "this is what happens when people who have never really had proper jobs now run the country" but that could be seen as mean.]
Ban labour brokers and, for starters, the Johannesburg General Hospital will lose 90% of its specialist nursing skills (ICU nurses, theatre nurses, neonatal nurses, trauma nurses, renal nurses). I know because I work through these agents too.
Skilled job-seekers (healthcare professionals, office admin staff, IT skills, teachers) who CHOOSE to work through labour brokers are mostly women, often mothers who want more time with their children. They don’t need ‘benefits’ like medical aid because hubby brings that slice of bacon home. They have the freedom to take time off for school holidays, or when a child is sick. And because they don’t get benefits they earn more than permanent staff.
Scrapping labour brokers, therefore, will cause the most pain to skilled women with families.
As far as I can gather, the ‘defective’ labour brokers so far identified are a bunch of ex-farm employees who exploit unskilled farm labour. It would be crazy, and unfair to working women, to scrap the whole system in order to remove a few bad apples.
Labour brokers are not statutory bodies, nor do they operate within ‘public sector’ interest.
They are strictly private establishments, and availing oneself of any service they may offer is entirely voluntary.
Advocating statutory prohibition or ‘scrapping’ of establishments which break no existing law nor belong to the state constitutes interference by the state with civil liberties, free choice and voluntary contract.
The motivation is obvious.
It is to constrict the potential labour supply, thereby reducing competition and strengthening the political leverage of the labour unions which are allied with the state itself…i.e. to further expand state power.
It is hardly surprising that the bureaucrats are not willing to listen to any reasoning which challenges their intent and foregone conclusions.
Mandundu…
none core profit making sectors in the business, yes i’m seriyass!
take for instance MTN, VODACOM, CELL C and /or TELKOM or any other privately owned company where profits are the driver(s) of sustainability, the core business is to suppy (quality) network and related products to their customers or potential customers and they have to perfect the same innovatively and consistantly because the money comes from that directly and they need to establish and maintain infratructure that goes with it, but same company finds it important to employ an inbound customer service call centre – so that it is accessible to existing customers, but note that the this call centre is not directly employed to make money or more money, that’s what i mean by none profit making sector, i concede that the statememt its self is a bit ambiguous, therefore company can choose as part of restructuring to cut costs part of which is UIF, PENSION, MEDICAL AID etc. on these departments, English is not my first language forgive me…
[before i get started, i really want to say "english is not my first language" gets tired. it's not mine either, but i dragged myself through years of subtitled television and socialised with people who only spoke english to improve it. i didn't have a choice in the latter, as my parents shipped me off to high school in a place where either of my home languages were not options as languages of instruction.]
ANYWAY… something that is definitely being lost here is that the labor broking companies are the ones who pay the employees’ uif and paye, and if the company offers a pension, that too. [most labor broking companies offer pension; some do not.]
it is far easier to hire and fire through use of a labor broking company. while the unions are so worried about the “fire” part, they’re not particularly interested in the “hire” part. in the interim, people are supposed to be honing their skills so they can be employable to other people at a higher rate of pay anyway. however, the culture of mediocrity that is so entrenched in south africa seems to preclude most people from doing such a thing. don’t blame the brokers for that; blame the employees. oh, wait, one is not allowed to blame the workers for *anything* here. eish.
The ANC did not pledge to ban labour brokers, but rather to “introduce laws to regulate contract work, subcontracting and outsourcing, address the problem of labour broking and prohibit certain abusive practices.” A subtle, but important, difference.
Ban Labour Broking – What a joke!!
The largest temporary employment providers in the world (Adecco & Manpower) are providing these services in excess of 80 countries around the world. Countries such as China, who in years gone by provided “jobs for life” have changed their thinking and strategy to remain competitive on the world stage. Temporary employment is a hugely growing industry in China. Maybe we have a few lessons to learn from the Chinese. Aren’t they one of the fastest recovering economies at present?????
AA, if I had to ‘address the problem’ of a cockroach in my house I would step on it! One person’s ‘address the problem’ is another person’s banning!!
This article is so well-written and informative; a rarity on this site of late.