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Cape Town - ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe reiterated on Tuesday that job creation should be the government's main aim while letting the quest for decent work conditions continue alongside.
"We must put the focus on what the actual challenge of society is - more work," he said in Cape Town in the first of a series of dialogues entitled "Building Democratic Societies" hosted by Idasa.
"Let's get as many people as we can jobs."
Mantashe said there was "no clarity on what decent jobs means" and it must be accepted that not all work created in South Africa would be of an equal nature.
"Societies do not work on formulas that are mathematical, it is sociological... the nature of jobs will not be the same in different sectors."
He added that different sectors of society would play their respective roles in fighting for decent work conditions.
If for example a job was a created in the mining industry, he was confident that the National Union of Mineworkers would "take care" to ensure that fair labour conditions applied.
Mantashe made headlines when he first voiced this stance after the ANC's lekgotla in Limpopo last month.
But he denied that his remarks suggested a departure from the ANC's 2007 Polokwane declaration of "making the creation of decent work opportunities the primary focus of economic policies".
"It's not either jobs or decent work. We need more jobs, we need decent work, we need sustainable development."
Mantashe's co-panelist, Western Cape Cosatu secretary general Tony Ehrenreich, disagreed. He said decent work conditions were vital because one worker often supported several unemployed relatives and his salary and benefits therefore acted as social security the state cannot provide.
Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader Athol Trollip accused the government and Cosatu of hyprocrisy for taking aim at labour broking.
He said the government's expanded public works programme was "state-sanctioned labour broking at its worst".
After Ehrenreich said President Jacob Zuma had done too little to address the gaping divide between rich and poor in his state of the nation address, Trollip charged that the trade union federation itself was creating a "two-tier system" through its insistence on restrictive labour policies.
"There are workers supported by Cosatu and there are those without work supported by nobody."
"We must put the focus on what the actual challenge of society is - more work," he said in Cape Town in the first of a series of dialogues entitled "Building Democratic Societies" hosted by Idasa.
"Let's get as many people as we can jobs."
Mantashe said there was "no clarity on what decent jobs means" and it must be accepted that not all work created in South Africa would be of an equal nature.
"Societies do not work on formulas that are mathematical, it is sociological... the nature of jobs will not be the same in different sectors."
He added that different sectors of society would play their respective roles in fighting for decent work conditions.
If for example a job was a created in the mining industry, he was confident that the National Union of Mineworkers would "take care" to ensure that fair labour conditions applied.
Mantashe made headlines when he first voiced this stance after the ANC's lekgotla in Limpopo last month.
But he denied that his remarks suggested a departure from the ANC's 2007 Polokwane declaration of "making the creation of decent work opportunities the primary focus of economic policies".
"It's not either jobs or decent work. We need more jobs, we need decent work, we need sustainable development."
Mantashe's co-panelist, Western Cape Cosatu secretary general Tony Ehrenreich, disagreed. He said decent work conditions were vital because one worker often supported several unemployed relatives and his salary and benefits therefore acted as social security the state cannot provide.
Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader Athol Trollip accused the government and Cosatu of hyprocrisy for taking aim at labour broking.
He said the government's expanded public works programme was "state-sanctioned labour broking at its worst".
After Ehrenreich said President Jacob Zuma had done too little to address the gaping divide between rich and poor in his state of the nation address, Trollip charged that the trade union federation itself was creating a "two-tier system" through its insistence on restrictive labour policies.
"There are workers supported by Cosatu and there are those without work supported by nobody."
