Alliance+tensions+simmer+over+labour+law+reforms

Business Day, Johannesburg, 11 July 2005
=Alliance tensions simmer over labour law reforms=


 * Linda Ensor, Political Correspondent**

CAPE TOWN — Conflicting interpretations of the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) stance on future labour reforms emerged within the governing alliance yesterday, with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) threatening strike action against attempts by government to introduce them.

The ANC’s national general council two weeks ago decided to shelve proposals to create a two-tier labour market and to introduce greater flexibility into the labour relations regime.

Cosatu understood the council’s decision to mean that the labour reform was off the agenda.

However, Deputy Finance Minister Jabu Moleketi, the architect of the proposals, has insisted that this was not the council’s decision.

Moleketi said at the weekend the council had decided that government should come up with a package of interventions that would include an industrial policy as well as macroeconomic and labour reforms designed to generate growth, enhance labour absorption capacity and reduce poverty.

An environment favourable to small enterprise had to be created, the deputy minister said.

“There was no such thing as labour reform being nonnegotiable,” Moleketi said. Reform had to be addressed, not in an isolated way, but as part of a total package of measures, he said.

However, Cosatu national spokesman Paul Notyhawa said labour reform was “nonnegotiable. It cannot even be talked about.”

Cosatu would engage in strikes and rolling mass action if government continued with its proposed labour reforms, Notyhawa said.

South African Communist Party acting spokesman Solly Mapaila said the ANC’s council had spoken and that government could not go against the mandate of the party.

“The views of the movement have to be respected. That is what is meant by democracy. Government does not operate in a vacuum. It gets its mandate from the ANC,” Notyhawa said.

Moleketi stressed that, in proceeding with the reforms, government was not trying to undermine the spirit of the national general council but that government’s policy-making role — and the experimentation associated with it — had to be accepted.

Any changes to the law would in any case have to be negotiated with labour and business in the National Economic Development and Labour Council, he said.

Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa has also indicated that government is reviewing six laws — including the Basic Conditions of Employment Act — to ease regulation on small business.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/national.aspx?ID=BD4A66540