Labour minister Nelisiwe Mildred Oliphant is pushing the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) for a decision on labour broking.
She requested the social partners to speed up the process of amending labour legislation since there was an expectation that this process would be finished by the end of this year.
Oliphant previously said the discussions around the amendments were going well at Nedlac.
She added that Nedlac will table the Bills in Parliament by no later than the first quarter of next year.
Draft amendments to the Labour Relations Act (LRA), Basic Conditions of Employment Act and Employment Equity Act, and a new piece of proposed legislation - the Public Employment Services Bill - were published in the Government Gazette in December.
The amendments propose a repeal of section 198 of the LRA, which regulates labour brokers, effectively prohibiting labour broking and leading to job losses, according to Democratic Alliance (DA) labour shadow minister Ian Ollis.
The Bills are currently at a delicate stage at Nedlac, an institution for social dialogue composed of business, government, labour and community, said the department.
Law abused
She suggested there will be no ban on labour broking, and self-regulation of the industry was also not an option in dealing with the kind of abuses that have occurred with labour broking.
She also said there cannot be an outright ban of the industry, since labour brokers are permitted by the law. “You can't just ban something that's in the legislation. The process is to amend. It's the abuse of that law that led to the amendments.”
Hurting ICTs
The DA and organised business opposed a ban of labour broking and called for greater regulation instead.
An outright ban on labour broking would harm the ICT services sector, as it would push up operating costs, hamper bottom line profit, and could worsen the sector's current skills shortage, according to analysts.
However, Cosatu has endorsed the amendments, saying labour broking is a new form of slavery and needs to be banned completely. It says it will continue to insist that nothing less than a total ban will be acceptable.
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