Call for social pact to solve collective bargaining problems

THE HEAD of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in South Africa has described the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) as a “sitting duck”.

While ILO SA director Vic van Vuuren did not advocate that Nedlac be replaced, he told industry leaders at the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (Seifsa) they needed to form a similar forum to fill the vacuum left by the council.

The body is responsible for fostering social dialogue between business, government, labour and community groups.

Van Vuuren told Seifsa in Joburg the council had been ineffective of late. This had prompted calls by some for an alternative forum that would address pressing collective bargaining challenges in the workplace as well as the country’s soaring unemployment rate.

“It’s (Nedlac) a sitting duck at the moment doing nothing. So what do we do? Create your own Nedlac as industry, you can’t wait. You don’t have to call it Nedlac but you have to create something in that vacuum and try to influence the environment,” he said.

Yesterday, Nedlac defended itself, saying it was “the most effective tool” the country had for social dialogue.

“We disagree that setting up another social dialogue institution will resolve the country’s issues.

“We need to use the spaces that already exist, and to strengthen them. That applies to Nedlac as well as to all other institutions set up to advance democracy,” said Nedlac spokeswoman Kim Jurgensen.

She also said Nedlac was hoping to appoint a permanent new executive director by early next year.

Van Vuuren said that since the founding systems for social dialogue had been formed in 1994, complacency had crept in.

“You have to come up with new solutions. I look at collective bargaining now and I look at the models we’ve got.

“In 1994, we came up with Nedlac and bargaining councils and they were just great.

“You have 1994 collective bargaining units out there and you are trying to solve problems totally different to what you had in 1994.

“You have to rethink how collective bargaining models are defined and put together.”

There is agreement with Van Vuuren among certain stakeholders.

Earlier this year, Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant told a mineworkers’ meeting she had “observed with a great deal of concern that the collective bargaining agenda is changing from what it used to be”.

“It seems to me the agenda is now more and exclusively about wages and very little about the broader empowerment of workers,” she said.

A social pact could help the situation, said Van Vuuren.

“What we need in South Africa is a social pact – that’s how the countries which have been successful got themselves out of the economic crisis. And the social pact has got to be a give from both sides - from workers and from management,” he said.