Pretoria - As South Africa continues to bleed jobs, labour is becoming more desperate in its plea for the government to rein in business to ensure retrenchments are the last resort and they start investing in the economy.
Stats SA’s announcement yesterday that unemployment had increased to 27.1% has drawn the ire of the country’s largest union federations - Cosatu and Fedusa.
Read also: SA's unemployment figures paint gloomy picture
Statistician-General Pali Lehohla has warned that, at this rate, the country was unlikely to reach the 11 million job-creation goal in the National Development Plan.
Cosatu spokesman Sizwe Pamla said it was unacceptable that companies were making mass profits while workers were shown the door.
“We are worried by the continuing investment strike by big business, especially after recent estimates show that cash held by all JSE companies is now close to R600 billion, and other estimates that in total SA corporations hold up to R1.3 trillion in deposits in South African banks and that this has increased since the 2008 financial crisis,” he said. “Despite the job losses due to economic stagnation, companies have continued to increase their profits.”
Cosatu is calling for stricter investment laws to ensure that merger and acquisitions transactions do not result in job losses. It has been estimated that 5 500 jobs will be lost in Anheuser-Busch InBev takeover of SABMiller, but it is unknown how many of them will be South African jobs.
Cosatu is calling for the courts to be actively involved in determining whether or not reasons given for retrenchments are true.
Fedusa said it was disappointed with the new stats. Mining, manufacturing and community and social services were the hardest hit sectors.
“The increase in unemployment can be directly linked to the fact that South Africa requires higher inclusive economic growth to support employment creation,” said Fedusa general secretary Dennis George.
“The leadership of the social partners should focus on finding sustainable solutions to the constraints that have been identified as a requirements for greater savings and investments, and more productive use of capital by a better skilled workforce.”
Many in the government, business and labour had hoped that the country would start seeing an improvement in employment numbers due to a number of high-level meetings to get the economy on the right track led by President Jacob Zuma and his deputy, Cyril Ramaphosa. The survey showed that about 239 000 more people joined the unemployed group in the last quarter, but the number of employed people increased by 288 000 during this time.
“Discouraged work-seekers accounted for two-thirds of the decrease among the not economically active population,” Lehohla said.
The survey shows that compared to the same period last year, employment remained virtually unchanged while unemployment grew by 455 000 or 8.4%.
The quarterly employment gains of 288 000 were driven by increases in six of the 10 industries, agriculture, manufacturing, utilities, trade, transport, finance and other business services, community and social services and private households.
The largest increases were recorded in construction (104 000), finance and other business services (103 000), trade (61 000), agriculture (56 000) and transport (53 000).
The number of employed persons decreased in community and social services, manufacturing, private households and mining.
The number of employed increased in seven of the nine provinces between April and September. The largest gains were in Gauteng with 126 000. “Ekurhuleni and the City of Tshwane recorded the highest gains in employment at 61 000 and 39 000 respectively,” Lehohla said.
LABOUR BUREAU / PRETORIA NEWS