Jobs Summit: will it deliver?

Key themes must include connection between the lack of jobs and rising social unrest.

It takes quality employment to reduce grant dependency and help families move out of the lower-bound poverty line.

The Jobs Summit kicks off today, and I hope its key themes include the negative cross-sectional connection between the lack of jobs and rising social unrest. As the International Labour Organisation’s annual World of Work report notes: “Job instability is, above all, a human tragedy for workers and their families”.

Pressure is mounting on the Jobs Summit to come out with realistic, implementable and achievable policies. The new Cosatu leadership is already cautioning against the hype, saying it might be “just another” talkshop.

The deepening recession and weak performance in key sectors means the economy sheds jobs instead of creating them. It’s been estimated that in just two quarters, more than 100 000 South Africans became unemployed. When considered against the share of the unemployed who have been looking for work for years and are now discouraged, a picture of an economy that’s unable to cope emerges.

Against this backdrop, South Africa’s long-term unemployment crisis and substantial policy interventions should be the focus of the Jobs Summit.

If the ongoing labour market weakness is not addressed, the inability of our young graduates to find jobs will continue to add to the increasing unemployed.

For the ordinary citizen, and more so for the unemployed, the motives for – and the political and economic consequences of – the Jobs Summit must be about creating jobs and stopping the current drain.

That we even need a Jobs Summit is an indication of policymakers who are cornered and have been reluctantly persuaded by the irrefutable numbers from Statistics SA regarding the almost collapsing state of the economy – an economy carrying the unemployed and those lifted by the social grants net.

The grants net won’t withstand that weight for long

What is critical for the Jobs Summit is that politically, anything but the boldest reforms on the labour market must consider two aspects: will organised labour agree to it, and if it favours the flexibility the private sector has been clamouring for, it cannot have loopholes to allow exploitation or misuse.

Furthermore, any central outcome that doesn’t incorporate mechanisms to safeguard present jobs and create good new jobs will fail: it takes quality employment to provide the economic security needed to reduce grant dependency and give families the means to move out of the lower-bound poverty line.

We have learned through Stats SA’s Poverty Trends report that although “social wages” have had a positive impact in reducing poverty, they aren’t sufficient and can never replace quality jobs.

The common sense view to come out of this summit must include a nationwide job creation initiative that doesn’t only focus on economic hubs. Policymakers will have to push back against the impact of capitalism that swoops in, creates jobs, and leaves after extracting enough profits, leaving the area desolate.

Finally, the Jobs Summit must stay away from promises of state-created jobs.