“If enacted without major amendment, they will not only put labour brokers out of business, but also increase the regulatory burden on employers, further tilt the balance of power towards unions, augment bureaucratic power, destroy opportunities for first-time job seekers, and further hinder the hiring of foreign skills by requiring employers to use state labour centres before doing so”.
The CE of the South African Institute of Race Relations, John Kane-Berman has an article Proposed new labour laws are the mother of all madness in the Business Day today.
Here are three further extracts from the article but the entire articles needs to be viewed or downloaded from the Business Day website if one is at all interested in the current debate over the proposed amendments.
“Sooner or later, the unemployment crisis will force labour market liberalisation upon the government, at which stage a strengthened union movement on the shop floor will make the liberalisation of labour law even more difficult.
Whatever influence Cosatu is able to wield at the political level, the four bills suggest it has considerable influence in the Department of Labour. In fact, the legislation is evidence that the department has been captured by Cosatu and others — many of them no doubt adherents of the South African Communist Party — committed to a state more interventionist than we have yet seen.
Punitive and coercive as they are, the four bills risk adding thousands of discouraged employers to the millions of discouraged workers in SA”.