ANNUAL REPORT LAUNCH

For the National Economic Development and Labour Council, the 1998/1999period produced the highest number of agreements the institution has achieved over its four year history.

The highlight of 1998/1999 for Nedlac was undoubtedly the PresidentialJobs Summit. Thirty five agreements were concluded at the Summit - some of which represented the culmination of years of discussion at Nedlac. These include the socia lplan and the lead project on housing.

300 meetings
In the year under review, Nedlac held approximately three hundred meetings of its four constituencies - business, labour, government and community. This includes 4Executive Councils, 16 Management Committee (including special meetings to deal withsection 77 notices) and 36 meetings in preparation for the jobs summit.

Apart from the Jobs Summit agreements, a further 23 agreements were reached, including on six ILO conventions, four SADC issues and three codes of goodpractice.

In addition, the Nedlac parties agreed on seven applications fordemarcation under the LRA and facilitated nominations to 8 statutory bodies. Extensive discussions of the European Community Trade Development and Co-operation Agreement and the SADC Trade Protocol were facilitated.

Nedlac has become model for social dialogue internationally. Itattracted 23 delegations from domestic and international institutions during 1998/99, including the President of Chile, Italian Minister of Trade and Industry and Chief Conciliator of Denmark.

Through the duty imposed on it by the Labour Relations Act to considernotices of socio-economic protest action, Nedlac was able to facilitate agreement on a process in four of the six notices it received. These included issues between public prosecutors and the Department of Justice and tertiary institution workers and their employers.

Nedlac's research in the 1998/99 period included a study on infrastructure delivery. A number of "Fridge" (Fund for research into industrialdevelopment growth and equity) studies concentrated on number of ways to improve thefunctioning of the South African economy. A project to enhance workplace change, the Workplace Challenge, has been implemented in 17 factories in three sectors. Studies were completed on government's role in promoting the use of technology in industry and are view of the tax holiday scheme.

Of Nedlac's R6,5m budget, 72% is allocated to salaries and administration. There is a 15-member secretariat that facilitates all the meetings of the Council. Whilst Nedlac does not pay meeting attendance fees, it does pay for costs incurred by delegates attending meetings. Just under 10% of the budget is spent on travel and accommodation. A further 10% is spent on support to the three non-government consituencies to enable them to co-ordinate their participation in Nedlac. Just under 5%is spent on communications, with about 2% spent on research, although the Council has been able to leverage significant amounts of outside funding for various research-based initiatives.

"International visitors to Nedlac have been amazed at the amount of work that hasbeen done and the number of agreements reached on a relatively small budget", said Wendy Dobson, acting Executive Director of Nedlac. "Although it is impossible to measure Nedlac's effectiveness by a simple tally of specific agreements against a budget, Nedlac has proved that it makes a valuable contribution to South Africa's new democracy."

The annual report contains messages from Nedlac's four constituencies. Overallgovernment convenor, Sipho Pityana, said that there was a need for Nedlac to move fromsocial dialogue to social partnership. Overall labour convenor, Ebrahim Patel, said that Nedlac, born in the optimism of democratic change in 1994, now tested in the volatile global market of 1999, had had real successes, in both domestic and international policy making.

Overall business convenor, Raymond Parsons, said that in 1998, the Nedlac parties had evinced a maturer approach based on a better understanding of what was achievable. Godfrey Jack, overall community convenor, said that joblessness, crime and poverty could only be defeated by a united action from government, business, labour and community organisations.

More details:

Agreements in 1998/1999

• Housing

• Memorandum of Understanding on Service Tariffs

• Public Works Programmes

• Skills Development Bill

• Employment Equity Bill

• Labour Relations Amendment Bill

• Code of Good practice on handling cases of sexual harassment

• Code of Good practice on picketing

• Code of Good Practice on Dismissals based on Operational Requirements

• Amendments to the Unemployment Insurance Fund Act

• Regulations to assist in the implementation of the Basic conditions of employment act

• Six ILO conventions

• Terms of reference for the SADC Employment and Labour sector

• Social Charter of Fundamental Rights in SADC

• Draft declaration on productivity in SADC

• Draft code on the safe use of chemicals in the SADC region

• Competition policy

• Social plan

• National Environmental management bill

• White paper on Energy policy