(Photo by Gallo Images/Brenton Geach)
Parliament heard that each sector s unique characteristics must be taken into account when setting equity targets.
The Employment Equity Act amendments seek to give the minister of employment and labour the power and discretion to set targets in specific sectors.
One submission expressed concern that when the minister sets targets, employees in affected sectors will not be heard.
Business formations from different sectors in the South African economy told Parliament s Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour that the Employment Equity Amendment Bill had to have a clause for adequate sector-by-sector consultation if it were to succeed without frustrating commercial interests.
New BEE laws let minister ‘make up rules for himself’: business group
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Business Group Sakeliga says that the proposed
Employment Equity Amendment Bill risks upending companies and hurting workers, as it would introduce onerous new requirements.
In a briefing to parliament on Tuesday (13 April), the group said that the bill empowers the minister of labour to prescribe racial demographic employment targets for individual companies to implement at every workplace and at every occupational level, under threat of fines and denial of compliance certificates.
“The bill envisions a future where every organisation, at each of its workplaces, at every occupation level, and in all its teams, reflect the racial demographics of the country, the province or the sector – whichever the minister picks.
14 April 2021 - South Africa risks triggering a flight of scarce skills and capital if it presses ahead with amendments to the Employment Equity Act that would give the labour minister the authority to set employment equity targets for employers across the economy.
Proposed amendments to Employment Equity Act challenged heraldlive.co.za - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from heraldlive.co.za Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A recent radio programme demonstrated how people can recognise and learn from the past, yet remain blind to the much more pressing present.
Under discussion was the new name for the Port Elizabeth Airport and its significance for South Africa in 2021. An historian from the University of Cape Town explained who the renamed Chief Dawid Stuurman International Airport was named after: he was a Khoi leader who joined forces with the Xhosa people in opposing colonial expansion on the 18
th-century eastern border of the Cape. We were further informed that the apartheid government’s policy of divide and rule had been most effective in shattering the unity between the Khoi (and, more broadly and subsequently, the coloured people) and the amaXhosa. The interviewer then asked: who benefits now from the division between black and coloured South Africans?