City Press reports that trade union Solidarity has launched a high court application to force the Department of Labour (DOL) to comply with the 2017/18 equality report published by the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC).  

The report found that certain sections of the Employment Equity Act (EEA) might be unconstitutional.  DOL spokesperson Thobile Lamati said they were still studying the July report and were still engaging with the Commission for Employment Equity (CEE) as recommended by the report.  According to court documents lodged with the Labour Court, the union wants the court to declare parts of the EEA unconstitutional and the DOL to halt its efforts to enforce the act.  Solidarity’s Anton van der Bijl commented:  “We want to ensure there is compliance with the report within these six months.”  Among key findings of the report were that the EEA’s definition of “designated groups” and SA’s system of data disaggregation was not in compliance with constitutional or international law obligations; that government’s failure to measure the impact of various affirmative action measures on the basis of need and disaggregated data, especially the extent to which such measures advanced indigenous peoples and people with disabilities, likewise violated international law obligations; and that the implementation of special measures in the employment equity sphere was currently misaligned to the constitutional objective of achieving substantive equality, to the extent that implementation might amount to rigid quotas and absolute barriers as opposed to flexible targets.

• Read this report by Lesetja Malope in full at City Press

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