We come from the painful historical past based on race exclusions. These exclusions also permeated through our labour market where job segregation was sanctioned to exclude black people, women and people with disabilities in order to deny them the opportunity to fully participate and contribute in the labour market. No one can deny that our labour market still suffers from the impact of the apartheid race exclusion legislation.
It has been 16 years since the passing of the Employment Equity Act, 1998, which marked a turning point in our history as the first equality legislation to be passed by a democratically elected Parliament. Despite the good intentions of this legislation to address the imbalances and inequalities in our labour market, there was resistance to embrace transformation.
The failure to embrace transformation necessitated the amendments to this Act in order to expedite the transformation of the labour market and to ensure full participation of all South Africans in the economy of this country. The Employment Equity Amendment Act, No 47 of 2013 and its Regulations take effect from 1 August 2014.
It is important to highlight that these amendments are meant to contribute towards the restoration of human dignity and also address the persisting inequalities experienced by the majority of South Africans as a result of Apartheid laws that were in place prior to our democracy.
In fact, the negotiations for the adoption of these amendments was as a result of robust engagements by all social partners, including organised business, organised labour, government and the broader society through the Parliamentary Public hearings processes.
It is against this backdrop, that the department introduced these amendments and we strongly believe that these will therefore, assist to expedite transformation in the workplace and enable the achievement of our constitutional mandate by eliminating unfair discrimination in terms of pay equity on the basis of race, gender and disability; or on any other arbitrary ground.
The salient feature of these amendments is the new innovation introduced to address discrimination in salaries. It is the concept of ‘equal pay for work of equal value’ to ensure that there is parity in remuneration of workers of the same employer doing work of equal value when all terms and conditions of employment are the same. Any differentiation in pay that cannot be justified becomes unfair discrimination.
Furthermore, a provision has been made for better dispute resolution mechanisms through the facilitation of access to justice through the CCMA and the Labour Court on unfair discrimination cases.
Above all, these amendments will strengthen the compliance mechanisms in the Act, including shortening the process for enforcing compliance by Labour inspectors. This means eliminating the need for Labour Inspectors to always secure a ‘Written Undertaking’ from employers or issuing a ‘Compliance Order’ to an employer before referring that employer to the Labour Court for non-compliance such as failure to develop and implement an Employment Equity Plan and failure to submit an Employment Equity Report.
Strengthening enforcement mechanisms alone, including increasing fines, will not be sufficient to address issues of equality and affirmative action in the workplace and society as whole. I therefore, urge employees and their representatives; employers and their representatives to engage on employment equity matters and embrace transformation in their workplaces said Minister Mildred Oliphant.
Contact:
Mokgadi Pela, Acting Ministerial Liaison Officer
Cell: 082 808 2168
E-mail: mokgadi.pela@labour.gov.za
