14th CEE report as flawed as before
The 14th Commission for Employment Equity (CEE) report, released today at the Employment Equity and Transformation Indaba in Sandton, repeats similar errors and misrepresentations of data that the Solidarity Research Institute (SRI) has repeatedly drawn attention to before (see here - PDF). The SRI will, after studying the latest report, once again release a comprehensive critical analysis. From a cursory reading of the report it is already clear the report is once again littered with mathematical and interpretation errors.
Adv. Dirk Groenewald, head of the Solidarity's Centre for Fair Labour Practices, said that during the launch of the report, the Minister of Labour, Mildred Oliphant, in referring to the current draft EEA regulations said that these are not intended to harm anyone in the designated groups, especially Coloured people and that anyone saying differently are telling a lie. "While the Minister may indeed not intend to cause harm, the draft regulations, if implemented, will undoubtedly cause great harm to all minority groups in South Africa. The focus should not be on what is intended, but rather on what the results will actually be. The result will be to force minorities to migrate to different regions in order to find work."
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. "By not considering factors like the pool of suitably qualified individuals, economic conditions and dynamics of business sizes, the CEE keeps using an irrational and unsuitable yardstick to measure the extent of racial transformation in the labour market. The CEE cannot expect rational results if their analysis is irrational," said Groenewald.
As before, the CEE focused mainly on slow racial transformation at the top management level, even though the 22 571 people at this level represent less than 0,5% of the total number of employees covered by the report.
The SRI will be studying the latest CEE report in greater depth in coming weeks, and will then release a more comprehensive analysis.
Statement issued by Adv. Dirk Groenewald, Head: Centre for Fair Labour Practices, Solidarity, April 9 2014
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