employment equity – praag.org

Telkom targets whites

Telkom headquarters in Pretoria, as seen from Church Square Photo: Wikipedia

Telkom plans to target white, male employees when making job cuts that may affect more than 2,600 managers at South Africa’s largest fixed-line phone company, according to labor unions.

The carrier will consider “employment equity” when deciding who to dismiss, according to a document two labor unions said they received from Pretoria-based Telkom this week.

Employment equity is a government policy seeking to boost black participation in the workforce regardless of demography or merit.

South African companies have to comply with legislation seeking to address racial inequalities that stem from apartheid rule, which ended in 1994.

White males account for almost 40 percent of the senior and middle management positions that Telkom wants to reduce, while less than 9 percent of South Africa’s population is white.

Solidarity, a union with close ties to the predominantly white Afrikaans community, said Telkom’s cuts may disproportionately target white workers.

Affirmative action refers to racial measures that encourage companies in South Africa to hire and promote more black staff and procure goods and services from black-owned companies, despite blacks being a majority in the country.

The measures obviously discriminate against the small white minority.

Companies aren’t required to apply such policies when cutting jobs. Telkom said yesterday it intends to reduce its “management layer” by about 25 percent.

The operator, about 40 percent owned by the South African government, “will consider a number of criteria, one of which is our obligation to comply with the Employment Equity Act.”

The other criteria include qualifications, potential, length of service, and gender, according to a document that the unions, Solidarity and the South African Communications Union, said they received.

At Telkom, white males account for 38 percent of senior management and 39 percent of middle management, according to its 2013 annual report.

Source: Bloomberg News

SAIRR: Rising expectations lead to more violent uprisings

Rising expectations and youth unemployment have been identified as some of the sources of violent protests which have increased dramatically in the country in recent months.

The South African Institute of Race Relations, SAIRR’s programme manager and researcher, Georgina Alexander, says: “We have more people on social welfare at the moment in the country than those who have employment.”

In his State of the Nation Address last week, President Jacob Zuma promised on Thursday that South Africa would enter a new radical phase of accelerated socioeconomic transformation after the May election.

“More importantly, after the elections, the country will enter a new radical phase in which we shall implement socioeconomic transformation policies and programmes that will meaningfully address poverty, unemployment and inequality.

“It is a phase of focusing on economic transformation in particular. We have achieved political freedom, now we must achieve economic freedom and ensure that the ownership, management and control of the economy is deracialised further.

More needed to be done to advance blacks, he said.

“The number of black people and women in senior management has increased from less than 10% in the 1990s to over 40% today, which is a good achievement for the country. But it is not enough. Each year, the Employment Equity report releases statistics that indicate that the economy is still controlled by white South Africans in terms of senior and top management positions.

“We must therefore intensify the implementation of affirmative action policies in order to deepen reconciliation and social cohesion in our country,” Mr Zuma said.

Alexander says, “There is a threat that these protests will increase and become more violent. […] The government can see that the delivery protests are becoming more violent. They need to address the deeper causes of these service delivery protests.”

The deeper reasons for the protest lie in levels of youth unemployment and dependency on state as well as increasing rising expectations that people have, but it’s all directly reliant on the state to do something about it.

“This is just a spark, the deeper reasons for the protest lie in levels of youth unemployment and dependency on state as well as increasing rising expectations that people have, but it’s all directly reliant on the state to do something about it like to increase people’s living standard for them.”

Police officials and the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) recently met to discuss the violent protests.

The SAHRC’s Danny Titus says, “The commissioner indicated to us that she would like to have a meeting next March with the Human Rights Commission focusing specifically on human rights and policing, and the number of issues around that.”

He says, “We would like to establish this relationship where we can make each other understand each other’s picture.”

Meanwhile, National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega says they are struggling to control violent protests because of a shortage of public order policing officers. There are only 4 000 such officers and yet there was double the number in 2006.

‘Embrace new affirmative action bill’: Black Management Forum

The Black Management Forum urged the private sector on Friday to embrace the Employment Equity Amendment Bill.

“The BMF applauds the passing of the EE Amendment Bill in Parliament and encourages corporate South Africa to embrace the amendments,” the organisation said in a statement.

The bill, which aims to regulate demographic representivity in the workplace completed its passage through Parliament on Thursday when it got the nod in the National Council of Provinces.

It had earlier been approved in the National Assembly.

“The amendments are necessary to ensure that the effects of past discriminatory practices can be addressed in order to level the playing field and afford everyone the same advantages and opportunities.”

Education, not race determines employment in South Africa – SAIRR

Educational achievement is a more important indicator of why people are employed rather than race, the SA Institute of Race Relations (Sairr) said on Wednesday.

“The proportion of people by race in professional positions closely mirrors the proportion of people by race with professional qualifications,” said research manager Lucy Holborn in a statement.

The data challenged the view that South African employers were resisting racial transformation in the workplace.

According to the data, there were about 41 percent of black people with degrees and there were 36 percent of blacks in professional positions.

There were 45 percent of white people with degrees or higher qualifications and there were 42 percent of them in professional positions.

“While a degree of racial prejudice exists in all societies, the data suggests that educational achievement will determine the pace of future employment equity progress in South Africa,” she said.

Sairr sourced information from Statistics SA and the Commission for Employment Equity.

Afrikaners are a lost cause, Dan Roodt

By English-speaking Patriot

Dear Dan Roodt, congratulations on your letter about apartheid in Business Day and here on praag.org. And did you see the knee jerk reaction from the liberals, the Afrikaans jingoes and the “others” in Business Day? Always guaranteed to defend the shambles, as you put it. I’ll never understand these people. They go against nature!

As far as Woolworths is concerned, I have boycotted them entirely. But others haven’t. The wording of their advertised “explanation” was ambiguous, so their actual racist advertisements need to be circulated so that everyone can see just what they are doing.

MultiChoice did the same thing – gave shares only to blacks. Yet most of MultiChoice customers are white. Nobody said a word.

I can tell you that all universities, all government departments, all municipalities and most private job advertising refer to “Employment Equity” and the other euphemisms they use to discriminate. People whine about this to the newspapers, but that’s as far as it goes. There will always be whites who will do the catering for these morons when they gorge themselves at their “conferences”, there will always be whites who will set up the sound system for their ridiculous rallies, there will always be whites who will provide the flowers for their funerals, and there will always be whites who, as you say, keep the whole show on the road. And look at the farmers! Do you think they will ever stand together and hold back the food for just one week? Not on your life!

It is difficult to get the whites to do anything. Especially Afrikaners, they simply sit back and suffer so very politely. They don’t want to be omstrede. They will die from ordentlikheid! They watch the department stores remove Afrikaans signs from within their stores, and they do nothing. Frankly, my feeling is they deserve what they get. Fancy buying the Beeld every day, the biggest piece of twisted and traitorous journalism I’ve ever seen in my life! And they’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember. They are giving soup to squatters and illegals, and their churches have made them so “lam” that it is a world phenomenon!

These third-world cretins are laughing all the way to the bank. There is no unity within Afrikanerdom, and if there are three together, one is a traitor. You’ve only got to look at the Boeremag trial. Without the Afrikaans informers, there would never have been a Boeremag. Yet these traitors walk around without a care in the world, getting their traitorous salaries from the ANC who are destroying their own Afrikaans people!

In Ireland they would have had their knees capped. And what do the Palestinians do with their traitors?

No Dan Roodt, they are a lost cause. There is no spirit, no sense of an eye for an eye, and they are awash with “it’s God’s will” and other such nonsense. They are living martyrs, no different from those who were thrust into the Colosseum in ancient Rome, ready to die for their “faith” and ending up as bones in the catacombs.

It makes me sick to my stomach!

ANC minister praises Woolworths

oliphant_mildred — Mildred Oliphant, the ANC's Minister of Labour

Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant on Friday lauded retailer Woolworths’ stance on employment equity.

“As [the] government of South Africa and those that seek genuine transformation, we shall continue to encourage companies like Woolworths to continue with the transformation and integration of the society,” she said in a statement.

PRAAG, followed by labour union Solidarity this week started a campaign to boycott Woolworths after the company ignored its ultimatum to remove job advertisements from its website which the union said excluded whites.

Woolworths argued it had an obligation to meet its employment equity targets as an employer with more than 50 employees.

Oliphant said Woolworths was among listed companies that had been subjected to a review process in 2009 in terms of the Employment Equity Act.

“During this process, like any other employer that was reviewed, Woolworths committed itself to transforming their workplace by implementing their employment equity plan, as approved by the director general,” she said.

When a follow-up review was done in the 2011/2012 financial year, the company had progressed in meeting its employment equity targets, she said.

“However, there are those that hate to see integration in the workplace and society in general; they seek to find fault with those that genuinely implement employment equity as a means of addressing our painful past and imbalance,” she said. – Sapa