‘Long way from transformation’

The Commission for Employment Equity says it is concerned at the high representation of foreign nationals when there are local skills available.

This view is contained in the commission’s latest report on compliance with the Employment Equity Act handed to Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant on Thursday.

Foreign nationals represent 3.4% of top management in SA, 3.2% of senior management, 2.9% of the professionally qualified and 1.7% of the skilled technical workforce, 2.4% of semiskilled and 3.5% of the unskilled.

Commission chairwoman Tabea Kabinde said the pace of transformation in the workforce — on both race and gender — remains extremely slow.

“Twenty years on [since the act was promulgated] we are still nowhere near celebrating effective implementation of transformation legislation.

“We cannot even begin to contemplate the implementation of a ‘sunset’ clause on this legislation,” Kabinde says in her foreword to the report.

The report notes that the commission is now advising the minister on “exploring other effective implementation and compliance mechanisms for this legislation”, and also creating an environment where the focus goes beyond compliance and seeks commitment from ethical leaders in the labour market.

Amendments to the act are being explored that would set sectoral numerical targets for employment equity so that compliance can be monitored and measured.

SECTORS

Business Unity SA acknowledged that the pace and depth of transformation had been insufficient but said the commission’s numbers did not tell the full story and only gave a partial picture of what was happening in the workplace.

The statistics provided by the commission in its report highlight the disparity in employment trends between the government and the private sector, with Africans dominating at top and senior management level and among the professionally qualified in government, and whites dominating in the private sector.