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Cape Town - The Minister of Labour, Membathisi
Mdladlana, has told Parliament that the ANC intends to bring in legislation after the election to put labour brokers out of business.
"Labour brokers who are contributing to the exploitation of workers; those who are risk absorbers and not employment creators; those who act as intermediaries between the client company and the workers to lower labour costs, to reduce direct exposure to labour legislation, to transfer employee risks to the labour broker and evade labour legislation without any employee liability, have a lot to worry about as we will be amending the legislation to prohibit them from running their business," he said on Thursday. He gave a written reply to a parliamentary question from the Democratic Alliance's
Anchen Dreyer.
Dreyer had asked whether labour brokers would be prohibited from running their businesses and wondered if they were, who would fulfil the role they played in providing work opportunities to thousands of work seekers? The minister did not answer this.
But he said that the department commissioned research in 2004 and 2007 on matters related to casualisation, labour broking and subcontracting.
The 2007 studies show that labour brokers did not necessarily create employment, he said. The research studies conducted for the department indicated that conditions of employment of workers who were not placed in permanent employment were considerably worse than the conditions experienced
by those in steady permanent employment, and that workers who worked for labour brokers were subject to exploitation.
"The studies show that companies find it beneficial to use subcontracted workers because they can be hired and fired as the economy dictates while it is not easy to hire and fire full-time workers," the minister said. "Both studies show that there is a fundamental lack of employment security for subcontracted workers. They are not given a notice when being fired and they
can lose their jobs anytime, especially when they have been injured."
- I-Net Bridge