Committee finds middle ground on labour broking

Reported on: 24 March 2010

The national Assembly's labour portfolio committee has stopped short of seeking to ban labour broking but it looks set to tighten the relationship between primary companies that win contracts and secondary companies that are subcontracted to do work to ensure that basic conditions of employment are guaranteed by all parties involved.

This is the compromise reached by the government and the opposition after the committee considered a report by a sub-committee chaired by opposition DA MP Ian Ollis, who for a long period has warned against an outright ban on labour broking.

His report focused on bringing an end to "abusive practices" - including different pay for similar work - in labour-employer relations rather than an outright ban on labour broking. For months the committee's chairwoman, Lumka Yengeni, an ANC MP, has declared labour broking to be an evil practice.

While the decision appears to be a bit of a compromise to the business lobby, Yengeni declined to refer to labour broking yesterday. "We don't want to use the term labour broking. We are talking about outsourcing and contracting."

Ultimately, both outsourcers and the contracting companies would be "jointly and severally" liable for ensuring that the basic conditions of employment and workers' rights were adhered to.

The committee, after months of debate on labour broking, recommended that the Labour Department should amend the Labour Relations Act and examine all legislation pertaining to concerns about abusive practices in the workplace. Yengeni said the workplace and the employer had to be carefully defined.

Cosatu's Western Cape provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich said that the debate had become "somewhat complicated" and the unions had opposed abusive practices. He added that the new proposal appeared to be moving "in the right direction".

He noted that some workers who were employed by an agency to do a job ended up working for another employer but did not enjoy the basic rights of employment.

John Botha, the chairman of the Confederation of Associations in the Private Employment Sector, which represents labour brokers, said provision had already been made in the law and bargaining chamber agreements for "joint and several liability" between the labour broker and a user organisation, which contracts the labour broker to source labour.

However, this did not necessarily make sense for all workers, said Botha, who represents Business Unity SA on the National Economic Development and Labour Council. As examples, he mentioned well-paid information technology specialists who worked for a company for a year and workers who did stocktaking for a limited period.