'Control', not equity, at heart of EE Act changes
Publish date: 28 February 2020
Issue Number: 109
Diary: CompliNEWS
Category: Legislation
Legalbrief Today Issue 4884
Amendments to the Employment Equity Act will hand powers to the Minister of Employment & Labour to set employment equity ‘targets’. This will, the government hopes, remedy the dearth of ‘transformation’ in the private sector. The Institute of Race Relations’ Terence Corrigan says whether we call these ‘targets’ or ‘quotas’, the implications are clear: ‘business will find its operations under increasing scrutiny with escalating penalties for failing to comply. This is its intent.’ Writing on the Daily Maverick site, Corrigan notes that last year, Minister Thulas Nxesi announced: ‘We are going to be very hard on employers. We know some people will ask questions like ‘‘why do we only begin being hard on employers when it is a time of crisis?’’ The reason that we focus on employment equity is because we need to address the inequality which is deeply rooted and all statistics show that as SA, we are doing very badly.’ Corrigan responds that Nxesi is correct in pointing to the ‘deeply rooted’ nature of SA’s malaise and the extent of inequality. What is less apparent, he says, is whether being ‘very hard on employers’ and expanding his discretion are productive ways forward. ‘If the intention is to address inequality, it is difficult to see what employment equity has to offer, even if it were to be flawlessly executed.’
Is government policy contributing to SA’s ‘anaemic’ growth? Corrigan believes that for the government to demand ever more intrusive measures is an exercise in self-delusion, if not self-destruction. He says the ‘drift of policy’ on employment equity has already been towards more punitive measures, with fines proposed in order to cripple, if not shut down, transgressors. Employment equity, he believes, reflects government’s obsession with state control in order to achieve the sort of development it needs. ‘In reality, what SA needs is boundless optimism to invest and do business. With 30% unemployment and millions lacking this most basic opportunity to enter the economy, this needs to be the guiding thinking behind economic policy.’ Instead, he says, government inspectors have reportedly reprimanded a Gauteng confectionary business for employing too many black women (apparently there are concerns about the failure to employ enough black men), which he says highlights the ‘absurdities’ of the current situation. ‘The amendments under consideration will make this worse’. Corrigan says being ‘very hard’ on employers may well satisfy government Ministers. ‘Economic exclusion and inequality will be the real winners.’
