Employment equity amendments a recipe for economic disaster
19 February 2020
Note to Editors: Please find an attached soundbite by Michael Cardo, DA Shadow Minister for Employment and Labour.
The Employment Equity (EE) Amendment Bill, which Cabinet has now sent to Parliament for processing, is another attempt by the ANC to strangle the life out of South Africa’s barely breathing economy in the name of “demographic representivity”. The Democratic Alliance (DA) will oppose it tooth and nail.
The draft bill serves to codify racial bean-counting. If enacted, the amendments will hamper economic growth and destroy jobs.
The proposed changes introduce harsher punitive measures for legislative non-compliance. They empower the Minister of Employment and Labour to set sector-specific EE targets, conferring on him a degree of coercive racial control that is completely incompatible with the principles of a market-based economy.
Already, the Department of Employment and Labour has tied itself up in knots because of its maniacal obsession with race.
After visiting a Kempton Park-based chocolate manufacturer, DA Leader John Steenhuisen revealed that the company, Beyers Chocolates, was being hounded by the Department for employing “too many” black women. The Department has insisted that the company should reduce its number of black female employees so as to reflect the provincial demographics of Gauteng, where 36.2% of residents are black women. Should the company fail to comply, the Department has threatened to take it to the Labour Court.
This is the logical conclusion of the ANC’s insane obsession with demographic representivity, whereby every population group must be represented in the workforce in exact accordance with their overall demographic representation.
The ANC would happily cause black women to lose their jobs in some warped pursuit of ideological purity. The EE Amendment Bill just takes this madness a few steps further.
Instead of focusing on racial bean-counting, the government should worry more about growing the pool of skilled black professionals and developing a pipeline of promotion in the workplace. Where the DA governs, we aim to create a solid skills pipeline, focusing on job-creating economic growth and supporting previously disadvantaged South Africans to participate in the economy.
The Employment Equity Amendment Bill is a pernicious piece of social engineering that the DA will oppose root and branch.
Issued by Michael Cardo, DA Shadow Minister for Employment and Labour, 19 February 2020
