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POOR Gwede Mantashe. Whenever he opens his mouth, a swarm of buzzing bees surrounds him.
At a news conference last week he said the ANC did not want to be caught up in the debate on decent work – it was the job of trade federation Cosatu to improve working conditions, and government and the ANC should focus instead on creating jobs.
One of Cosatu's basic crusades is the living wage campaign. This is a collective bargaining drive aimed at improving wages to bring about subsistence wages in certain sectors.
Mantashe was formerly one of the National Union of Metalworkers pioneers, striving for basic wages in the mining industry in negotiations with the Chamber of Mines.
What Mantashe actually meant was that Cosatu should focus on its campaign, instead of insisting on the creation of "decent work".
Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven was quick to react, saying that one of the ANC's resolutions at the 2007 Polokwane conference had been that the party would strive for the creation of decent work.
This had devolved into a fully-fledged debate, in which Cosatu wanted to place the issue on the agenda for the next conference of the alliance partners.
It took no time for the ANC Youth League to join in the chorus, with threatening remarks that anyone who wished to water down the term decent work would have to think again.
The Youth League hates Mantashe with a passion. His remarks on decent work were plain good sense, but they gave the league another rod for his back.
It speaks volumes that the Youth League woke up only a week after Mantashe's remarks.
The wording of the Polokwane decision refers to "Making the creation of decent work opportunities the primary focus of economic policies".
By this week Mantashe had become pretty bored with the issue, declaring it a sterile debate. In reality none of the alliance members are in disagreement with each other, he told Sake24 on Monday.
The problem is that decent work is an international concept which means something very different from Cosatu's apparent definition.
In the late 1990s, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) embarked on a global campaign to promote decent work in response to the effects of globalisation and the dilute forms of employment that had ensued.
It's as much a problem in South Africa as it is in most other countries: workers who are contracted out and lose all their job security, and piece workers forever doomed to informal work relations while their wages and social conditions make it impossible to escape from poverty.
This campaign has been the cornerstone of the ILO's work in developing countries.
But its approach is completely different to that of South Africa, where legislation that will make these forms of economic activity impossible or even prohibited is being considered.
The ILO's campaign consists mainly of aid programmes for microenterprises in the informal sector, aimed at helping them grow into businesses in the formal sector.
This is the only way the conditions of the workers (often also the owners) can be improved to a level where they enjoy social benefits like medical cover and retirement provision.
So, the ILO focuses on small business development rather than trying to kill off alternative forms of work with overregulation. This is the opposite of what the department of labour is now considering, egged on by Cosatu with the draft legislation on labour broking announced by Nelisiwe Oliphant at the end of 2010.
Intense debate in coded language
The ANC's resolution on decent work is no different from that of the ILO, said Mantashe.
He said one could not now create one's own definition of decent work, although the ANC's Polokwane resolution had not elaborated on this.
These events mask the divisions in government and the cabinet in this regard. The draft legislation was presented to cabinet, but Sake24 learnt from an irreproachable source that it could not reach consensus on the issue.
Eventually, cabinet decided to leave it up to Nedlac to determine, through a process of negotiation, what labour-broking legislation should contain.
At the time of writing, Oliphant was at odds with the unions on the subject at a conference on labour market policy her department had organised for Cosatu and the two other trade union federations, Fedusa and Nactu.
A dual labour system has evolved in South Africa over the past decade or even longer, just as it has in many other developing countries.
There is a formal, regulated labour market and below it an informal labour market.
There are those in the ANC who would do away with the lower level. Then there are people like Mantashe, who want to help improve conditions at the informal level.
The debate is therefore not as sterile as Mantashe said. In fact, it is extremely intense, but taking place in coded language that could be somewhat misleading to outsiders.
- Sake24
