Cosatu+blasts+Asgisa+proposals,+Irene+Louw,+City+Press

City Press, Johannesburg, February 19, 2006
=Cosatu blasts Asgisa proposals=

//Unfair, slow growth a big problem for union giant//

 * Irene Louw**

The first signs of displeasure with aspects of government’s Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA (Asgisa) were shown by the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) this week.

As it emerged from its first central executive committee meeting of the year, the union fired the first salvo by calling for the new economic strategy to be “fundamentally redesigned”.

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said: “The Asgisa framework identifies the important problem which is slow and inequitable growth, and points to some key reasons rooted in the inherited economic structure. While many of the proposed solutions have considerable merit, they do not adequately reflect the overall aim of inclusive, shared growth. Taken together, they seem inadequate to achieve the desired aims.”

Cosatu said it could only support the strategy if argreement was reached for it to be redesigned “to ensure that our common commitment to shared rather than inequitable growth runs through all its programmes”.

Vavi said proposals to exempt small and medium-sized entreprises from some labour laws reduced workers’ rights and weakened the scope of centralised bargaining.

“While we appreciate the important contribution a programme like Asgisa can make, it cannot be taken forward effectively outside the alliance commitment to a transformatory growth project.

“The specific proposals in the document, for instance on sectors and infrastructure projects, require much more work to secure alignment around a common development vision. The alliance will set in place a practical programme to develop a common understanding of the broader growth trajectory and identify the role of all the major sectors and social programmes in establishing a more equitable economy,” he said.

While he admitted that relations in the alliance were strained, Vavi said that all its partners should talk about Asgisa.

Another sign of Cosatu’s thinking on Asgisa can be found in the People’s Budget Coalition response to this year’s budget which referred to Asgisa interventions as “limited”. Cosatu is a member of the coalition.

In a document assessing Asgisa, Cosatu says the “elements of Asgisa are inadequate to achieve the desired transformation of the economy”.

The process of broad-based black economic empowerment is also raised as a concern.

“The proposals… represent the most important state intervention in the private sector since 1994. Yet many of the proposals are not aligned with equitable growth. For instance they provide little or inadequate support for employment creation, local procurement, growth in co-operatives or broad-based ownership. Government risks sending contradictory signals to big business on the relative importance of developing a small black capitalist class and achieving shared growth.

“Until these tasks are undertaken, it will be difficult to take Asgisa seriously as a strong programme to bring about shared growth,” says the document.

It also states that “we need a practical programme of work, above all for the alliance to build unity around a strong economic and social development strategy in response to the current commodity boom and the past 10 years’ experience of persistent economic exclusion for many of our people”.

On infrastructure development, one of the pillars on which the strategy rests, Cosatu describes the projects as “more a shopping list of ideas from individual state entities than a coherent strategy to support growth”.

The rest of the document tackles and questions Asgisa’s sector investment strategies, its education and skills development plans and second economy interventions.

The latter, says Cosatu, is “by far the weakest in the document”.

“The measures on the second economy seem entirely delinked from the proposals for infrastructure development and sector strategies. That will inevitably lead to perpetuation of the inequitable two-tier economy rather than overcoming it,” The document reads.

Cosatu wants Asgisa to commit to sub-contracting to small businesses, support for the co-operative movement and a strategy for the former homelands.

The federation also wants the monitoring and evaluation of Asgisa to include a tripartite process with a well=defined criteria and procedures based in the National Economic Development and Labour Council.