The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes Cabinet’s approval of the National Labour Migration Policy and the Employee Services Amendment Bill.  COSATU extensively engaged on both the Policy and the Bill at Nedlac and looks forward to the Bill’s processing and adoption by Parliament and their implementation.

The Bill and the Policy provide a long overdue response to the flood of undocumented migrant labour into the economy over the past decade.  They enable the Minister for Employment and Labour to set limits on the number of documented migrant workers that can be employed in a workplace and an economic sector.  These limits are critical for an economy battling dangerously high and rising unemployment levels of 43.1% overall and 72% for youth. 

We have seen countless unscrupulous employers in certain sectors, in particular agriculture, petrol stations, restaurants, construction amongst others; preferring to employ undocumented migrant labour as their vulnerability opens them to wildly abusive exploitation.  We hope that the Department of Employment and Labour’s recruitment drive for an additional 20 000 labour inspectors will provide a decisive boost to efforts to crack on such violations of workers’ hard won labour rights.

It is crucial that the Critical Skills List be continuously assessed by government with business and labour at Nedlac to ensure that it is positioned to attracting scarce skills to South Africa, to upskilling local workers and to ensuring unemployed South Africans with such needed skills are prioritised.

Whilst migration is ingrained with the history and South Africa is no exception, the current levels into South Africa are unsustainable, more so given the high levels of unemployment.  The Bill and Policy seek to find the correct balance and to ensure the state is better capacitated to set limits and protect the needs of workers.  These are badly needed, and their implementation must be expedited.

Issued by COSATU

Matthew Parks (COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator)

Cell: 082 785 0687

Email: matthew@cosatu.org.za