I write to you on behalfof the Southern African Catholic Bishop's Conference, in particular from its Church & Work office and our Parliamentary Liaison Office.
Recently we made representations to the Minister of Labour setting our objections to the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill. We will alsobe making representation to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee.
It has come to my attention that the Department of labour is accepting written submission on the new bill. I would like to take this opportunity to formally submit to you, our proposals due to go before the Portfolio Committee.
I hope that you will give due consideration to our objections and proposals.
Yours Sincerely
John Capel
Secretary: Church & Work
THE IMPLICATIONS FOR WORKERS OF THE GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED NEW EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS BILL Why are we making this intervention? What is our mission? We come here in regard to the proposed Employment Standard Bill. We believe it necessary to challenge a few aspects expressed in the Green Paper proposing the Act which we see as being destructive of workers' rights.
Our approach arises from the ethical concerns which have been emphasised by our Church in recent decades. This intervention has been prepared in meetings of a particular section of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, namely the section entitled the Church and World Office, an office concerned with labour matters and the whole world of work, and the effects of the economics of production on people. This has also been prepared in consultation with the SACBC Parliamentary Liaison office.
WHY ARE WE CONCERNED 'The Church considers it her duty to speak out on work from the viewpoint of the moral order to which it belongs, and she sees this as one as one of her important tasks within the service that she renders to the evangelical message as a whole' (Pope John Paul II in his 1991 message 'On Human Work:', known as an encyclical, which is a letter addressed to Catholics world-wide.
WHAT MORAL ISSUE? The new Act lays down praiseworthy standards of working conditions, but they are not always to be applied. Although, for example, the Act reduces working hours and raises the rate of overtime pay, nevertheless employers will be able to avoid these new standards through mechanisms in the new Act, allowing for a compressed working week (12 hours a day and 4 days a week); allowing for the averaging out of working hours (working more than 45 hoursinone week with no extra pay, but less hours in another week) and so on. This will be achieved by allowing for variations from the standards laid down. This is the section that we are most deeply concerned with, and which we consider to infringe moral standards.
It can be illustrated that for some employers, the term 'Free Market' has a connotation that their business activities should be 'free' of all government control or moral values, free even of any ethical values set by bussiness itself. There should be no interference, they say, in what they are doing. As a result, immoral practices have crept in throughout the world, practices which infringe human rights and scriptural values, and universal values held not only by Christians but also Muslims, Hindus and Jews, not to mention the values of 'ubuntu' and the values of humanism.
Our understanding of the Act is that in future there will be possibility, under the concept of flexibility, that variations from the standards of working hours and related issues laid down by the Act, can be negotiated by employers when dealing with employees.
This can happen in three ways, as listed below.
With workers seeking new jobs. There are several million unemployed job-seekers in the country. We foresee that most will be open to the pressures put on them by this kind of individual bargaining, and will be forced by unscrupulous prospective employers to enter into agreement of the type that has hitherto been excluded by legislation.
With workers already in jobs. The vast majority of workers in our country, 4.6 million of them, are not covered by collective bargaining agreements, but are unorganised. These are the most vulnerable workers of all. The variations allowed for in the Act, under the concept of flexibility, will enable employers to negotiate with them individually, the employer from a position of power, the worker from a position of dependence on the employer. These workers will be looking to the new Act for protection, but variations from thestandards of the Act will deny them this protection.
With organised workers. In strongly organised sectors of the labour force, with established centralised bargaining, the workers will discover that employers will be strongly tempted, individual negotiations, thus breaking down the strength of centralised bargaining. Also in times of recession, when the unions are at their weakest, they will be tempted to trade-off employment standards for other gains. For examples higher wages.
ROLE OF THE GOVERNMENT All workers need to be protected, by government legislation, from this type of pressure and exploitation. The values of the free-market economy world-wide, namely productivity and profit, and which are the values held by most employers, do not protect workers from this exploitation.
Our Church teaches that governments have a moral duty to intervene actively in society, including the economy, "to promote and ensure justice. The State cannot be reduced to a mere passive observer of what happens in society and the economy, including what happens in and through the market mechanism" (Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference, ERADICATING; POVERTY IN OUR WORLD, 1996).
We consider that by allowing this concept of flexibility into South African labour legislation the State is neglecting its duty of promoting the 'common good', that is, of promoting the conditions that lead to the development of our people. It will be reduced to being a mere passive observer. We don't want this to happen.
We reject several arguments that are commonly used to defend the concept of flexibility.
The first argument is that there is no alternative to this flexibility. The Green Paper proposing the Act sees flexibility in this area as crucial to becoming internationally competitive. We reject that. We see it as a retrograde step and would prefer to see other alternatives.
The second argument is that such matters will only be entered into 'by agreement'. This is no argument at all. Unorganised workers and people entering the job market negotiating from a position of weakness, will agree to almost anything to get a job or to keep their job.
The third argument is that individual workers will not be allowed to make individual agreement that are worse than collective agreements at their workplace. This is no defence at all, as the majority of workers (4.6 million) are not covered by collective agreements.
A fourth argument is that this proposed flexibility will be regulated and will be limited in the Act to certain working conditions. We say that by allowing flexibility to any matters, we are opening the door to this global immoral tendency already mentioned.
THE EFFECTS OF FLEXIBILITY We also object to the effects that such flexibility will bring to the shop floor.
It means that in such cases the minimum floorof rights will be done away with.
It will affect health of workers, in that working hours at certain times of the year (times of high demand for production) will be greatly increased.
Also the envisaged weekly rest period of 36 hours can be averaged to 60 hours over two weeks. What this means is that workers can be made to work eleven and half days out of fourteen without a break.
The intensification of work that results from working longer hours will lead to a far greater incidence of health problems forworkers over a period of time, which fewer hours in subsequent weeks cannot rectify
Regular working of longer hours will lead to much greater incidence of repetitive stress injuries among workers and will ultimately lead to a shortening of many workers working lives. This is the growing trend internationally.
It will affect incomes, in that increased working hours at certain times of the year or certain times of the month will no longer be compensated for 'overtime pay', but merely compensated for by shorter hours at times of slack production.
It will inevitably lead to greater unemployment, in that existing employees will be forced to work longer hours at times of high production, rather than employers being forced to take a few extra workers. There is a big incentive for employers to do this (to get workers, to work 12 hours per day at certain times) as it brings down unit costs and allows them to recover money spent on machinery much more quickly. Both have this effect of increasing employers' profitability, but lead to greater unemployment.
It will affect social, religious, family and sporting activities of workers, in that their free time will be governed by the needs of the workplace, and no longer regulated to certain minimum standards. Work on Sundays as a norm means that workers will be unable to have a day of rest in common with the others in society; and be unable to participate with others onthat day in their organisations such as trade unions, civics, churches, sports clubs and so on.
It will open the door to workers being treated as units of labour, commodities to be used when needed and discarded without any means of support when not needed.
The variation of working hours represents a major attack on workers existing employment rights and standards, won by organised workers. The ESA will provide employers with an incentive to decentralise bargaining as much as possible where they are stranger and can thus force workers to accept lower and lower employment standards.
Workers are weakest when they negotiate as individuals, and strongest when they negotiate collectively. The Bill will drastically weaken the negotiating ability of Trade Unions. For corer a century the Catholic Church has Driven its support to the right of workersto enter into unions and bargain collectively. For the last 25 years the Church in South Africa has been in the forefront of assisting the independent unions which emerged in the struggle. We do not wish to see the benefits of this eroded by the concept of flexibility. Without a floorof non-negotiable rights workers will end up trading of these rights for other benefits. For example, to work on Sundays, night work and shift work. All which have disastrous socio-political consequences, as well as destabilising family life. The effects of night work on the health of theindividual does not compensate for our endeavour to be internationally competitive. The social cost or theseworkers will in the future be a further cost burden to the state.
It will thus expose workers to worse exploitation than before.
A QUESTION We are puzzled that the new democratic government is now supposedly 'reforming' a labour market known internationally for its cheap black labour system in a way that is less advantageous to these very workers. The new government seems committed to an economic strategy that puts 'international competitiveness of South African employers, (the biggest beneficiary of the cheap black labour systems), is 'high' employment and wage standards of workers! We consider this to be a myth propagated by interested parties.
CONCLUSION We are concerned because God has revealed himself as someone watching over the poor, the exploited and oppressed. As a Church, we are dedicated to doing God's work in the world, and are therefore have a duty to watch over the interests of the poor.
GENERAL PROPOSALS We therefore ask that this concept of 'flexibility' and 'variation' be removed from the Act.
TheBasic Conditions of Employment should contain absolute floor of minimum rights, which cannot be varied downwards.
Furthermore we call upon government not to introduce employment legislation which will have the effect of undermining worker rights and destroy minimum employment standards presently enjoyed.
Any new employment standard legislation should at least lie an improvement upon present legislation governing employment standards, and offer greater protection to workers.
Also, future employment standards legislation should safeguard workers family, social, political and religious life.
Our understanding is that the Minister will have discretionary powers to set employment standards in different sectors. We believe that before these standards can be set, the Minister ensure public hearings. Public hearings will insure transparency and accountability, thus insuring the practice of democracy, a practice all our people hold dear.
MORE SPECIFIC PROPOSALS We ask that the current protection of Sunday as a common day of rest be maintained through retaining the norm that:
Work not be allowed on Sundays except where exemption is motivated for and granted by the department.
We agree that Sunday work should be remunerated at double rate of pay.
We further ask that overtime worked be paid for and not refunded through averaging out of time worked over a 4 months period It is not beneficial either to family life or the health of a worker to be worked to death for long hours in the production rush for summer holidays at Christmas and then to refund these hours by paid lay off in January.
Delegation to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee - May 1997
Delegates: Mr John Capel
Mr Jabu Ramatla
Fr Peter John Pearson
S.A.C.B.C
PO Box 941
Pretoria
0001
Facsimile (012) 526-62I8