I Jacobs: Departmental Labour Summit

22 November 2007

Programme director
Honourable guests
Colleagues, comrades and friends
Ladies and gentlemen

We are all gathered here, today, at this Labour Summit to take stock of the
fruits of our hard work in turning around the fortunes of our department and
making a meaningful contribution to service delivery, in view of recent
challenges and may the summit also help us to use our collective muscle and
wisdom to bring about a better life for all the people of our province.

This Labour Summit takes place on the eve of the presentation of our annual
report to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature, a report which we are immensely
proud and confident to unveil in order to acknowledge the excellent work of all
our departmental teams in our successful Turn-Around Strategy that we adopted
in the year 2006. At the same time, the summit also puts us in a better
position to bring about industrial peace and justice and better labour
relations.

The hosting of the summit here at Gallagher Estate, within the precinct that
plays host to the Pan African Parliament, also takes place five months after
the Annual Conference of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), a major
international platform for discussion on issues affecting and defining
workplace relations across the world. Let me also hasten to say that this
summit is modelled on the International Labour Conference, in both form and
content, seeking to ensure adequate representation of employees in discussion
and dialogue, working hand in hand with labour formations National Education
and Health Workers Union (Nehawu) and Public Servants Association (PSA). In our
view, as government, our strategic initiatives on socio-economic growth and
development would be meaningless if they were not informed by the expertise,
talent and knowledge of the workforce.

Our gathering in this summit is informed by the need for unity in action,
brought about by the unity of opposites, against the backdrop of healthy
tensions and contradictions that lead to positive outcomes. Indeed, the
workforce and the employer need one another and the manner in which we address
attendant challenges must necessarily are for the benefit of broader society,
for we are all in the business of servicing the public.

The capacity of the state to change the quality of life of the people of our
country, and the residents of our province, relies on the strength of the
partnership between all of us in government and our important partners in civil
society, especially organised labour and community based organisations, and
activists.

As government, we believe that the success of our programmes depends on our
commitment to invest in our people, especially public servants, who are at the
forefront of our drive to reduce poverty and underdevelopment. Indeed, this
will help in producing healthy, skilled and productive people and also build
better and sustainable communities in our province. Together, we need to
continue the process of building a caring society, founded on the principles of
respect for human dignity and the integrity of all persons, irrespective of
race, colour or creed.

Indeed, we are bound by historical achievements, and a time tested umbilical
cord, to continue working together in developing and implementing programmes
aimed at addressing the challenge of meaningful transformation, in the
workplace, and in society in general. Therefore, such a history dictates that
we all help restore the dignity of our communities by addressing the basic
conditions of employment of our people.

Together, we must ensure that the historical mission of bringing about a
living wage and building a sustainable social safety net continues to
characterise our democratic order. At the same time, we need to work towards
reducing the impact and prevalence of poverty and underdevelopment. Therefore,
the establishment of National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac)
is a major milestone in our historic mission and we all need to ensure that its
progressive work becomes a central part of our industrial relations policies
and practices in the workplace.

In the same vein, we need to ensure the implementation of the resolutions of
the International Labour Organisation on equality in the workplace. In this
regard, we must take a leaf from the 1998 International Labour Conference that
adopted the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which
spoke about the need to set fundamental international labour standards, in the
workplace, concerning freedom of association, the right to organise and
collective bargaining and the promotion of non-discriminatory practices.

In our own local circumstances, the issue of eradicating racism, sexism and
ensuring equitable access to skills development and training is crucial to real
change in the workplace. The challenge of limiting the effects and the
prevalence of HIV and AIDS in the workplace also remains one of the biggest
challenges of our times, calling on all of us to intensify our efforts to
reduce its negative on the quality of life of government employees, in
particular, and society in general.

In this regard, work is being done to ensure the prevention of the spread of
HIV; the provision of support for those affected and infected by this pandemic;
the management and mitigation of the impact of AIDS on the workplace and
underlying communities and the implementation of Nedlac Guidelines to eliminate
stigma and discrimination on the basis of real or perceived HIV status.

Communication is an essential key to effective governance and an important
part of ensuring healthy workplace relations across all sections of the
organisation. Together, we are engaged in the process of transition from mere
public administration of services to that of public governance and
accountability, by introducing an era of the collective mobilisation, nurturing
and enhancement of skills and resources to deepen democratic practice and
rapidly increase access to service delivery for all our people.

This is aimed ensuring that, indeed, the people do govern by strengthening
governance and accountability in government, while at the same time maintaining
the integrity of the use of state resources and its people, especially public
servants. Public Governance will help improve service quality and efficiency in
the public service, and government employees would establish partnerships with
communities in finding sustainable solutions to local challenges, thereby
ensuring community ownership of such solutions.

Therefore, government is, thus, the instrument used by society to as a whole
as opposed to being limited to public administrators, public employees and
politicians. This also helps increase the capacity of government in dealing
with attendant challenges. It puts public servants in a better position to
evaluate the impact of their work whereby they assume responsibility for their
own performance as measured against customer satisfaction. Thus, government
becomes people-centred machinery for meaningful change in society.

We are convinced that the quality of public servants that we have in our
department will continue to help us to change face of our communities for the
better, relying on skill, commitment and dedication to bring about a better
life for all. We are also confident that the summit will help us to further
inculcate a culture of good practice on the part of both the employer and the
public servants in respect of good practices and measures of good performance,
such as commitment to support the development of our staff; encouraging staff
to improve their own performance and the performance of others and improving
the image of the organisation as a whole by recognising the contributions of
all employees, instead of focusing on a few good performers. However, we will
continue to honour those highly dedicated public servants whose contribution
exceeds the norm.
In the same vein, we will ensure equal access to opportunities for individual
personal development in all our teams by setting clearly understood performance
objectives and plans between the employer and the employee; and putting
together an action plan to realise those objectives.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Public Transport, Roads and Works, Gauteng
Provincial Government
22 November 2007