Cape Town — The Black Management Forum has called on government to probe "racism and other forms of unfair discrimination" in the workplace.

The forum, established to develop managerial leadership among of black managers and professionals, made the call during a sitting of Parliament's portfolio committee on labour yesterday. It said a commission of inquiry should be given a one-year mandate to review incidents of racial discrimination in the workplace and the extent to which blacks, women and people with disabilities had been advanced by their employers.

Forum MD Jerry Vilakazi said it was necessary to measure progress in the diversification of the workforce, the elimination of discrimination and the advancement of designated groups into all professions and levels of the economy.

He said that more than 10 years after democracy, corporate SA was far from reaching targets for affirmative action. In 2000, a blueprint called for 20% of executive directors, 30% of senior managers, 40% of middle managers and 50% of junior managers and professionals to be black.

Vilakazi said the continuing "flagrant violation" of the Employment Equity Act, with designated employers failing to submit employment equity reports, and the inability of the labour department to enforce the act, had added to the forum's concerns.

The ground had shifted in the employment equity debate and there was a need for "some serious review" of what it still entailed and how it fitted into the broad-based black economic empowerment scorecard, charter and code agreements, he said.

A commission could collect "valid and reliable" statistics on the demographic profile of all major sectors of the economy, Vilakazi said.

Committee chairwoman Pat Jayiya said while the forum's proposals should be discussed because they represented the views of "people on the ground", it was premature to establish a commission of inquiry. She said the Commission on Employment Equity, which the forum had criticised for its "spectacular failure to advance employment equity in the last 10 years", and which is expected to be reconvened soon after the expiry of its mandate, should be "given a chance" to see what effect it would have on speeding up employment equity.

Business Unity SA appealed to the committee for consistency in the setting of equity targets by state departments. While the trade and industry department set targets, the labour department accepted company targets.