13th CEE report as flawed as in the past - Solidarity
The 13th Commission for Employment Equity (CEE) report, released yesterday at the Employment Equity and Transformation Indaba in Johannesburg, repeats similar errors and misrepresentations of data that the Solidarity Research Institute (SRI) has pointed out in previous years.
During the launch of the report, the Minister of Labour, Mildred Oliphant, quoted from the Freedom Charter which reads: ‘All laws which discriminate on grounds of race, colour or belief shall be repealed.' It is truly ironic that these words were quoted to defend the Employment Equity Act's legislated discrimination according to race.
The approach the CEE followed in this year's report is once again a dogmatic adherence to the racial composition of the economically active population (EAP) of South Africa as the only yardstick for measuring the progress of racial transformation, while any and all other factors that are relevant to racial transformation or the measurement thereof are excluded. This approach is not only extremely one-sided, it is also not aligned with Section 42 of the Employment Equity Act.
As in the past, the CEE also focuses mainly on slow racial transformation at the top management level, even though the 52 611 people at this level represent less than 1% of the total number of employees covered by the report.
The Solidarity Research Institute will be studying the 13th CEE report in greater depth in coming weeks, with a view to releasing a more comprehensive analysis. In the meantime, the SRI's analysis of the 12th report (attached), section 5 of the analysis in particular, remains instructive.
Statement issued by Paul Joubert, Senior economic researcher: SRI, April 19 2013
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