Karima Brown
9 January 2009
Johannesburg — THE African National Congress (ANC) aims to get tough on the "problem of labour broking".
This is spelt out in its election manifesto -- to be unveiled tomorrow -- and it suggests that its Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) labour ally has managed to wrest major concessions in its battle to keep the ANC sensitive to issues affecting workers and its core constituency, the poor.
The ANC's promise of tougher legislation is aimed at ensuring "decent work", and is one of the five priorities the party has outlined in its election manifesto as the basis of its five-year plan with Jacob Zuma as president.
The others are education; health; rural development, food security and land reform; and the fight against crime and corruption.
The manifesto spells out its objectives "to avoid exploitation of workers and ensure decent work for all workers as well as to protect the employment relationship, introduce laws to regulate contract work, subcontracting and outsourcing, address the problem of labour broking and prohibit certain abusive practices".
But the party's efforts to rein in labour brokers and create more jobs is likely to be hobbled by a worsening global economic climate that has already seen job losses in the mining and automotive sectors.
Cosatu estimated last year that about 20000 jobs would be lost.
The creation of 5-million jobs was agreed on at the economic summit of the tripartite alliance last year.
But the target was not reached, and the global financial and economic crisis is expected to make this more difficult this year.
The party will have to balance the need to stem job losses against taking a tougher stand against employers who transgress labour laws, which many in the business community argue are too stringent and rigid.
The ANC's election manifesto is the product of extensive negotiations and discussions with allies Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP), which have played key roles in Zuma's rise to power in the party.
With the ANC facing an electoral challenge from the breakaway Congress of the People, which claims the ANC has been hijacked by its leftist allies, Zuma will have to balance the ANC's desire to satisfy all its constituencies, including labour and business. As part of its efforts to generate more jobs, the ANC's manifesto calls for the creation of an environment allowing for more labour-intensive production methods, procurement policies that support local jobs, and building public-private partnerships.
The inclusion of this clause in the ANC's five-year plan is part of the party's efforts to ensure tighter monitoring and implementation of labour laws, which have long been demanded by the trade union movement.
The ANC plans to make the creation of decent work the primary focus of the party's economic policies.
To achieve this, the manifesto states, the ANC plans to make "maximum" use of "all the means at the disposal of the government and the ANC".
This includes reorienting the programmes of development finance institutions and regulatory bodies, through government procurement and public incentive rules, industrial, trade, competition, labour market and other policies.
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