"Let us maintain the momentum":
address by Tito Mboweni, Minister of Labour and leader of the government delegationto Nedlac

Deputy President of the Republic and chairperson of the Nedlac summit, Cabinetcolleagues, leaders of business, labour and community-based development

organisations, the executive director of Nedlac, officials from the various governmentdepartments present here, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

Our annual summits are a time to reflect on the achievements, difficulties andchallenges facing Nedlac. And it is a time to reflect on social partnership generally andthe extent to which labour, business, community-based development organisations andgovernment share a common vision, a broadly agreed approach to the development of ourcountry.

When we met last year, the atmosphere was very tense. There was a feeling that Nedlacwas facing a crisis. But we confounded all the doomsday prophets by coming out of thesummit with a consensus declaration which unequivocally placed the record before thecountry that Nedlac was not dead but was alive and well. Although there are issues on thetable which the parties to Nedlac are busy negotiating, with some of the parties takingvarious actions to press ahead their positions, it is not a sign that Nedlac is dead.Indeed, Nedlac continues to provide the venue and the mechanism for resolving whateverdifferences there might be among all of us.

Sometimes our people may be forgiven for thinking that this Nedlac is waste of time.That may be because our people rarely hear about the many positive things happening atNedlac and they are mostly exposed to those issues on which there is no immediateagreement. We need to carry the message to the country as a whole that when the parties toNedlac do not reach agreement easily, that does not signify the end of Nedlac but thatthose disagreements are part of the processes of negotiations. Perhaps the Nedlac partiesneed to be more proactive in communicating the successes of Nedlac. When the partiesthemselves articulate the progress being made at Nedlac, we may improve the image of thiscritically important institution.

Nedlac, as an institution, affords the social partners an opportunity to discuss,negotiate, comment on, and add value to our nation's policy debates. In a number of policyareas it has successfully done this, as the annual report indicates. But, in truth, muchremains to be done. And whatever we say here is not meant to destroy Nedlac but to buildit in the interest of the country as a whole.

There are three particular areas of concern:

• First, as we have indicated on previous occasions, Nedlac's role is to enrich, not to supplant, government decision-making. At the end of the day government must balance the expressed views of the social partners and community organisations with wider public interests, especially the needs of sections of the population which may be less organised or less articulate in presenting their case. Total consensus is obviously a first prize, but sufficient consensus may frequently be good enough. The same is true of the other constituent members of this institution. They have their constituencies to look after.

• Second, we are concerned to avoid haggling ad infinitum on the details of legislation. We too often focus on crossing our t's and dotting our i's. There is sometimes a tendency to treat the Nedlac processes as if they were simply industrial bargaining at a higher plain. This approach reflects the fact that we have not yet developed a mature system of social partnership in our country. Anyway, Rome was not built in a day.

• A third concern, and a related one, is that there is insufficient shared vision between the social partners. We would like to see a shared vision emerging around a national social agreement for employment and growth. This is, after all, among the main challenges facing us. We need to build a common understanding of how to develop our economy, boost its rate of growth and create substantially more jobs than we are currently doing. Building that common vision involves making short-term concessions in order to achieve longer-term goals. It means moving away from positional bargaining. It means providing leadership to our respective constituencies and beyond.

There continues to be an issue on which we seem to be in continuous, or permanent,disagreement, and which is a cause of many tensions in the Nedlac process and beyond. Thisis the Gear strategy of government. The fiercest opposition to this comes from the tradeunion movement. It is an issue which spills over again and again into other areas of workand causes unnecessary deadlocks all around the place. Divisions among ourselves on amatter so important to our economy and society seems to be extremely imprudent. It,therefore, seems to us that a way must be found to eliminating the sources of thistension. What exactly that mechanism is, is something we must look into seriously andurgently. There are others within business who are also determined to give a right-winginterpretation of Gear for their own purposes. Such interpretations do not help theprocess either.

We will not comment here on current negotiations around the basic conditions ofemployment bill. We are hopeful that, despite the manifest hostilities which have emergedbetween business and labour, we will find an appropriate set of solutions before tablingthe bill in Parliament. All that one can say for now is that, through negotiations, wewill find each other. But time is of the essence here.

I would, though, like to reflect on the challenge of developing a shared vision. Thepublic expects the social partners to develop a mature approach to the many challengesfacing our nation. Clearly, job creation, economic development and growth, as theComprehensive Labour Market Commission pointed out, are our central challenges. Much ofthe solution lies outside the direct ambit of the Department of Labour. We all accept thatmacroeconomic policy, land reform and trade and industrial policies, among others,directly impact on economic development, growth and job creation. The challenge for therelevant stakeholders is to ensure that the direct and indirect effects of their policiessupport these broader goals.

The Department of Labour must likewise examine its own backyard-the area of labourmarket policy. Our approach is that we need to enhance basic labour security, providingbasic protection and development for all workers, while also tackling those policies andissues which are inimical to job creation.

What this means is that we are convinced that all workers-including farmworkers,domestic workers, security guards and other vulnerable workers-deserve to be treated withdignity and respect. And it means no longer seeing labour only as a cost but as ourcountry's key resource. We are committed to legislating realistic, basic conditions forall and to increasing substantially the quantity and quality of work-related training.

But this leg of our policy needs to be balanced by another leg if it is to provide astable basis for the future. We are also committed to developing more stable andpredictable labour relations, removing unnecessary inefficiencies in the labour market,and ensuring that labour costs (both direct and indirect) are not only matched byproductivity gains, but are also set at realistic levels and do not discourage jobcreation.

The key to developing a common vision is acceptance that both legs of this approach areessential and inseparable. And this means both employers and unions (and government)accepting the necessary trade-offs, and making the implicit short-term compromises in theinterests of longer-term development, growth job creation. This requires leadership andvision.

The parties need to reflect honestly, not only on what others should do, but on what theycan do to promote economic development, growth and job creation. It disturbs us that, evenwhen they are growing, our largest companies hardly ever employ more people. And itdisturbs us that our largest unions rarely confront the employment implications of theirdemands or reflect on the overall effects of labour instability. The jobs summit, to whichwe have made reference above and elsewhere, should be an opportunity for all socialpartners and government departments to state what they plan to do to promote economicdevelopment, growth and job creation, without undermining labour security.

At this summit, we need to commit ourselves to moving Nedlac to a higher gear. Thiscommitment should enable us to refocus on what we want Nedlac to do. We should agree tostrengthen the capacities of the parties to Nedlac to approach matters on the basis ofjoint investigations and recommendations, where appropriate, without taking away from theconstituent members their right to carry on with their own functions. As we prepare andmove towards the jobs summit, we will all have to be properly geared to this endeavour. Itis one summit which should not be allowed to fail. The country cannot afford a failure inthis regard.

In conclusion, government will continue to place key policy and legislative proposalsbefore Nedlac. In the labour field, three pieces of legislation will be key over the next12 months. These relate to skills development, employment equity, and amendments to theLRA. I hope the social partners will enrich the documents tabled by government, and willdo so bearing in mind our core objectives of economic development, growth and jobcreation.

I thank you.