The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes the African National Congress led government’s tabling of the Employment Services Amendment Bill before Parliament.  The Federation engaged extensively on the Bill at Nedlac and looks forward to the Bill’s processing and adoption by Parliament and their implementation by the Department of Employment and Labour.

The Bill provides a long overdue response to the flood of undocumented migrant labour into the economy over the past decade.  The Bill enables the Minister for Employment and Labour to set limits on the number of documented migrant workers that can be employed in a workplace, region and economic sector.  These limits are critical for an economy battling to cope with extremely high and rising unemployment levels of 43.7% overall and 62% for youth. 

We have seen countless unscrupulous employers in certain sectors; in particular agriculture, fuel stations, restaurants, construction amongst others; maliciously exploiting the desperation of undocumented migrant labour as their vulnerability opens them to wildly abusive exploitation.  We need the Department of Employment and Labour’s recruitment drive for an additional 10 000 labour inspectors to be prioritised and honoured as this would provide a decisive boost to efforts to crack down such criminal violations of local and migrant workers’ inalienable 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 correctly positioned to attracting scarce skills to South Africa, to upskilling local workers and to ensuring unemployed South Africans with such needed skills are prioritised for training.

Whilst migration is correctly ingrained with the history of humanity and South Africa is no exception, the current levels into South Africa are unsustainable, more so given our dangerously high rates of unemployment.  The Bill seeks 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.  A balanced approach to migration, in particular for our neighbouring states, is needed, more so if we are to avoid the periodic outbreaks of unacceptable xenophobic, Afrophobic and vigilante violence.

Issued by COSATU

Matthew Parks (COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator)

Mobile: 082 785 0687

Email: matthew@cosatu.org.za