Transformation laggards warned

Johannesburg - The Department of Labour has again threatened to take those who failed to fulfil their obligations to the Labour Court.

However, it has made similar threats in years before, so it remains to be seen whether it will carry out its action while South African companies drag their feet in transforming.

Yesterday, the director-general of the Department of Labour, Thobile Lamati, said the litigation against errant companies was at an “advanced stage”.

“The first batch of 77 designated employers who failed to submit reports are in the process of being referred to the Labour Court for a fine according to Schedule 1 of the Employment Equity Act,” Lamati said. “This will be followed by the rest of the approximately 1 400 designated employers identified from the Employment Equity System as having failed to report.”

At the same time, as the government was threatening to take errant companies to court, the Department of Labour announced that reporting by employers on employment equity had increased by 10.4 percent since 2012.

The report, which surveyed about 24 000 employers that employ 7 million people, concluded that white males in particular still dominated top and senior management and in disproportion to the proportion of economically active population (EAP) in the country.

The proportion of whites holding top management positions has fallen from 72.6 percent in 2012 to 70 percent in 2014. There was a slight drop of 0.9 percent in male representation at the top management level, but it still remained very high considering the level of economic activity proportional to other demographics.

Significant

The representation of females was low at the top management level, with only white females having a significant representation in most provinces even surpassing their EAP.

“The Western Cape province is showing the highest representation for both (white) males (63.8 percent) and females (14 percent),” the report found. High white top management representation followed in Mpumalanga (60.2 percent), Eastern Cape (59.4 percent) and Free State (59.2 percent).

African males had the second highest representation in most provinces except in KwaZulu-Natal where Indian males (17.6 percent) were highly represented at three times their economically active proportion level and the Northern Cape, which has coloured males (12.2 percent) as the second highest representation, albeit still short of their EAP.

White female representation was significantly higher than that of black women at almost double their EAP and even surpassed that of males in Gauteng and the Western Cape.

The representation of persons with disabilities had been on a steady increase from 1.7 percent in 2012 to 2 percent in 2014 at this level, the report said. Representation of whites at the senior management level had continued on a downward trend, although the most significant decrease of 10.7 percent was recorded between 2010 and 2012.

“The decrease translated into more opportunities for (Africans, coloureds and Indians) and foreign nationals… The decrease in the representation of males at the senior management level has been slower between 2012 and 2014 (1.3 percent) compared to 2010 and 2012. This decrease has benefited female representation,” the commission concluded.

Labour Bureau

Business Report