SITA cuts labour brokers

The State IT Agency (SITA) has reduced its reliance on labour brokers by over 80%.

Anthea Summers, GM of corporate communications, says there are numerous reasons for this decision.

“But at the heart of it was the need to implement the SITA turnaround strategy, which emphasised fiscal discipline and organisational fitness, as part of SITA's renewal.”

She adds that it has also been critical that the organisation evaluate the needed skills set that is linked to the organisation becoming a prime systems integrator for government.

“This includes the move from SITA to provide an end-to-end service. All these have bearing on the kind of skills/employees that the organisation needs at this critical time. Furthermore, over the last financial year, SITA implemented a conversion process - based on skills - for people to become permanent employees or fixed-term contractors.”

SITA CEO Blake Mosley-Lefatola, in an interview with ITWeb last month, said contractors who work with the agency are not its employees and so it does not have contractual obligations to them.

This comes after ITWeb in July reported that contractors doing work for SITA threatened to strike due to a lack of increases, the delay in being made permanent employees, and non-existent communication with SITA authorities, among other issues.

“So they are not employees. For all intents and purposes they may not be seen as employees of SITA. They are employees for those labour broking houses.”

It is the responsibility of the labour broking owners to interact with their employees around their conditions of employment, said the CEO.

SITA has interacted with the labour broking houses and indicated it feels the working relationship is not very good and so further interaction is needed between the contractors and labour brokers.

However, a labour broker who works with SITA and prefers to remain anonymous, says Mosley-Lefatola is wrongly placing the blame of the contractors' unhappiness on labour broking houses.

“Contracting creates an ideal forum for the technical-by-heart person who prefers to remain in the consulting stream and does not want to become part of an organisation's structure and politics. It also satisfies the typical fluctuating demand for IT expertise in the market.”

He explains that the contracting model has evolved over the years, and the main difference is that labour brokers now employ their consultants with a salary, training, leave and benefits, but still provide them to the clients on a contracting basis.

“The negative branding of labour brokers I think unfairly includes the IT sector as well. Our consultants/contractors are highly skilled, with above average remuneration and are well cared for, otherwise we lose them.”

SITA previously worked with labour brokers but now aims to contract all its contractors directly, according to the labour broker.

“A large section of their resourcing pool is contractors of which the bulk is directly contracted. So, when the CEO is saying the labour brokers are not doing their part in communicating with their consultants, he is misleading the market and doing the industry a huge injustice. It is SITA themselves that are treating their contractors badly. The SITA contractors that threaten to strike are all SITA-direct contractors.”

He explains that many of these were forced to move away from their labour brokers and sign-up with SITA directly, or lose their jobs.

“SITA had no rationale to do this, other than to increase their margins. They are now poised to become the largest labour broker in the country, preventing their private sector counterparts from participating in government business. Yet, they do not have the correct approach, models and attitude in place to deal with contractors.

“With this attitude of 'they're not ours', they are adding oil to the anti-labour broker fire.”

These feelings were also expressed by SITA contractors who approached ITWeb with several issues regarding SITA as an employer.

SITA's largest services-income is generated through the “consulting model” by providing IT skills to government, a market it has now forcibly made its own to share with no one, according to the labour broker.

“That is an unhealthy situation. They are players and referee, and no one to measure them. They may claim to work under Treasury rates, but have an input in that as well.

“So, while nothing has changed as far as government's dependence on external IT skills is concerned, the market to supply has been monopolised by a government institution. SITA is doing nothing different than the labour brokers they play down.”

SITA employs personnel under similar contracts, but in the past the consultants had labour brokers to act as the buffer.

“SITA is a government organisation, with excessive personnel departments, regulations, red-tape and overheads, and they could never compete with the private sector so they just eliminate them from the government IT sector.”

Last year, Cabinet adopted a turnaround framework for the ailing SITA. One of the outcomes of the strategy is for the agency to become an employer of choice, said public service and administration minister Richard Baloyi previously.

However, contractors employed by the agency may strike due to unhappiness with the agency's HR procedures.

SITA was established to ensure government benefits through bulk purchasing of ICT goods and services, and to deliver e-government services and establish an ICT skills development plan.

However, it has been beleaguered by allegations of large-scale corruption, irregular procurement practices, and poor governance and leadership.