Exclusive: Labour Minister’s claim is shown to have been inaccurate
LABOUR Minister Mildred Oliphant was inaccurate when she claimed more than 50 percent of the more than 21 companies that had been fined for contraventions of the Employment Equity Act were JSE-listed companies.
A list provided by the Department of Labour to Business Report of the companies that had been fined for contraventions of the act did not include a single JSE-listed company.
One of the finalised cases on the list was the Nkandla Local Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal. The town of Nkandla is the home town of President Jacob Zuma.
Oliphant made the claims about JSE-listed companies in a speech that coincided with the release earlier this month of the 17th employment equity report.
She said the report mirrored the glaring lack of appetite for transformation, especially by big corporates.
“It is very concerning that there are just too many JSE listed companies that are completely ignoring the law.
“To date there are more than 21 companies that have been fined for non compliance and several others that are on the verge of being fined.
“JSE-listed companies alone account for more than 50 percent of the companies that have (been) issued fines for non compliance,” she said.
Masede Mosima, the assistant director media monitoring and research at the labour department, provided Business Report with a list 26 employment equity cases that had been referred to the Labour Court and finalised either through an out of court settlement or a Labour Court order.
Of the 26 cases, 21 involved local municipalities that either reached an out of court settlement or a Labour Court order was issued against them.
In the remaining five cases, court orders were issued against Dold Circle, Guy Williamson, Indian Ocean Export Company and a court order issued against the department in a case involving Pick n Pay Giyani. An out of court settlement was reached for a case involving the Hilton Hotel.
All the contraventions involved either operating without an employment equity plan or failing to report on an employment equity plan.
Business Report requested clarification from Mosima about Oliphant’s comments and specifically her references to JSE-listed companies, but he failed to respond.
Andre Visser, the general manager of issuer regulation at the JSE, said on Friday that the JSE was not aware of any companies listed on the exchange that had been convicted of contravening the Employment Equity Act.
Visser said the JSE had not seen the labour department list of companies that were convicted and fined for contraventions of the act.
He stressed that the JSE’s mandate as regulator of companies listed on the exchange was to require and monitor that the companies operate according to JSE Listing Requirements.
“Anything outside of the Listing Requirements, including the Employment Equity Act, is outside of what we are able to regulate,” he said.
However, Visser said the JSE strongly supported the transformation of the South African economy and believed it could contribute to this.
The JSE, for that reason, had commenced with the introduction of a new listing requirement last year that asked JSE-listed companies for disclosure on transformation issues, he said. “Having started this process with a focus on gender diversity, the JSE is now widening its focus to include racial diversity disclosure.