SAFTU ON THE 24TH COMMISSION FOR EMPLOYMENT
EQUITY ANNUAL REPORT
The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) notes the 24th Commission for Employment Equity Annual Report, which indicates that Africans and women are disproportionately underrepresented in top and senior management positions.
The report shows that 62,1% of the top managers are white, 6,1% are Coloured, 11,6% are Indian and 17,2% are African. In Senior Management positions, whites occupy 48,5% of the positions, Indians 12,4%, Coloureds 8,5%, and Africans 27,6%. In top management, women are dismally represented at 1,8%, while they occupy 37,7% of the positions in senior management.
Compared to the economically active populations of both Africans and Women, these figures show that they are disproportionally underrepresented. Moreover, they indicated that the labour market is still distorted by the legacies of apartheid and colonialism, in which women and the black majority were excluded from ownership and management of the means of production. To prove that there is a link between ownership and occupying top and senior management positions, the report shows that the distribution of senior and top management is roughly equitable in the public sector than in the private sector. For instance, Black Africans with an economically active population (EAP) of 80% occupy 74,7% of positions in the public sector, while they occupy 14% in the private sector. Their white counterparts, with an EAP of 7,7% occupy 65,1% of top management positions in the private sector.
The link between ownership and occupation in management means that the pursuit of employment equity cannot be separated from the struggle for ownership of the means of production. It is the dominance of the white minority in economic ownership and control that accounts for many white managers in top and senior positions of businesses in the private sector. Precisely for this reason, SAFTU is not a narrow bread-and-butter federation fighting shopfloor issues. It recognises the need to abolish capitalism to achieve true equity in the labour market.
In spite of our assessment and conclusion, we are committed to reforms to benefit workers and historically disadvantaged populations. In the past 30 years, the trade union movement has made an immense contribution to changing the employment landscape in this country, bringing affirmative policies in the labour market. The Employment Equity Act in 1998 is a result of these relentless efforts and campaigns to correct the distortions created by racialised and patriarchal capitalism.
Racialised capitalism used colour bar laws under apartheid and colonialism to condemn the black working class majority to the realm of providing cheap labour. That made black people the face of poverty and for women to remain excluded from certain industries and senior positions in industries where they were allowed to participate. Even though laws such as Employment Equity have been enacted to correct such institutionalised exclusion and marginalisation, more efforts are needed. Hence SAFTU supports the employment equity targets which we do not think the Dept of Employment and Labour (DoEL) is doing enough to force employers to implement.
We contend that affirmative policies that affect the labour market goes beyond employment equity. They include education and the national minimum wage. SAFTU supports the call for free education from cradle to grave so that historically disadvantaged black majority (coloureds, Africans and Indians) can get education, training and skills to raise them from being providers of unskilled labour, to skilled and professional labour that has more value. This will mean they can no longer be cheap labourers, a position they have been condemned to historically.
Our support for the National Minimum Wage is an affirmative policy in a class sense. It creates a floor beneath which no labour can be sold, and thus lift labourers, including the so-called unskilled labour to be paid at their value. The main beneficiaries of this are the previously disadvantaged black workers who are the lowest-paid layer of workers in the economy. SAFTU continues to fight for a National Minimum Living Wage which we think should at least be R72 per hour to guarantee workers a monthly income of R12 000. This is part of our ongoing campaign to ensure affirmative policies to lift workers out of poverty.
