Cosatu’s response to the Treasury’s economic reform proposals is predictably small-minded, self-interested and obstructionist (“Cosatu rebukes Mboweni for paper”, September 18).
The trade union federation champions the rights of the employed at the expense of the needs of the unemployed. It has little interest in helping SA’s 10-million jobless get a foot onto the labour market ladder.
In the same fashion, the central committee of the SA Communist Party (SACP) has dismissed the finance minister’s strategy document with all its usual bluster about neoliberalism and the running dogs of capitalism.
The interesting question is where the newly configured department of employment and labour, under the political stewardship of minister Thulas Nxesi, stands on all of this. Its expanded mandate requires the department to have a much clearer focus on job creation by helping to create a conducive environment for investment, growth and employment.
The department should be backing Tito Mboweni’s reforms to the hilt. Yet when I asked Nxesi for his thoughts on Treasury’s document — particularly its suggestion of exemptions for small businesses from certain labour regulations such as the extension of bargaining council agreements — he was unenthusiastic and noncommittal. As the SACP’s deputy national chair, no doubt he has to toe the politburo’s line. It’s hardly an encouraging response from the man charged with co-ordinating the government’s job-creation efforts.
Michael Cardo
DA shadow employment and labour minister