Racism still prevalent in workplace

By Christelle du Toit, ITWeb senior journalist

Johannesburg, 17 Sept 2008

Employers need to look at other ways, provided for in legislation, when employing people, rather than only considering formal qualifications, says the Commission for Employment Equity (CEE).

The CEE, which falls under the auspices of the Department of Labour, presented its eighth annual report to labour minister Membathisi Mdladlana yesterday.

"More than 10 years into our democracy, institutional racism continues to reign supreme. The only difference is that previously it was more overt, but now it has assumed sophisticated forms in day-to-day work practices," says CEE chairman Jimmy Manyi.

"The law allows for formal qualifications; prior learning, even in unrelated fields; previous experience; and the capacity to acquire knowledge in a reasonable timeframe," he explains.

"Especially in a field like IT, people could have been doing an exceptional job for ages, but don`t necessarily have the necessary qualifications, so it is a challenge for the country to quantify those skills."

He says while the report`s findings have not yet been broken down for individual industries, such as ICT, they apply across the board, and employers need to do more to step to the fore.

Manyi previously called the ICT industry racist and said institutional racism was to blame for the country`s skills crisis.

The results of an ITWeb/JCSE survey, released this week, pegged the ICT skills shortage at about 70 000, a figure that is about double previous projections.

The CEE`s report, which covers the period from 1 April 2007 to 31 March 2008, and provides an analysis of employment equity (EE), draws on reports received from employers in October 2007, and compares them to EE reports received in 2003.

Manyi says: "Information in this report still shows continued gross under-representation of Africans, coloureds and people with disabilities within the designated groups in key areas of the labour market. In addition, it is disturbing to note that the employment trends of people with disabilities mirror the disproportionate representation of white people against other racial groupings - even among people with disabilities, whites are more likely to be employed than other race groups."

The findings

Some of the report`s key points are that, at top management level:

* Blacks increased from 23.8% in 2003, to 28.8% in 2007, their economically active population (EAP) being 87.9%.
* Coloureds decreased from 4% to 3.9%, which means their representation is about a third of their EAP.
* Women increased from 14.1% to 17.8%, which is approximately two-and-half times below their EAP (45.8%).
* African women representation increased from 3.7% to 5.9% - their representation is approximately six times below their EAP (34.4%).
* Coloured women representation increased from 0.9% to 1%, and their EAP stands at 5%.
White women, who are almost twice their EAP, increased from 8.8% to 9.8%.

While senior management trends reflected those of top management, Manyi says the commission is especially troubled by the progress being made at the professionally qualified and middle management level.

Here, the following could be seen:

* Blacks decreased from 50% to 41.3%.
* Whites increased from 49.2% to 57.2%.
* Women representation decreased from 36.4% to 33.4%, with black women decreasing from 23.8% to 14.9%.
* African women decreased from 17.7% to 8.6%, with coloureds standing at 3.2%.
* White women increased from 14.9% to 18.5%.
* The representation of people with disabilities dropped from 1% in 2003, to 0.5% in 2007.