Today's Labour News

Post-doctoral Research Fellow Mohammad Amir Anwar notes that the SA government believes that the business processing industry is key to job creation and the sector has indeed created thousands of jobs, in particular for the country’s youth.  

Data from 2017 estimated that 228,642 people were employed in the sector.  But unlike in India, the growth of SA’s business process outsourcing sector has not generated the kind of jobs that offer workers the chance of progressing up the career ladder.  In SA, workers tend to get stuck in the same, low-level and poorly paid jobs with very few prospects of promotion or career development and their working conditions are also generally poor.  The sector is always changing, upgrading its technologies and processes, which could indeed lead to social upgrading in the form of improvements in livelihood opportunities.  But, the author’s research also found that the upgrading by firms led to intense workplace monitoring, insecure employment relations, a lack of career opportunities and adverse physical and psychological impacts.  One of the problems with the sector’s flexible, precarious environment is that there is little room for agents’ internal progression within a firm, largely because of a high volume of temporary and part-time employees hired through labour agencies or contractors.  The author concludes that the SA government needs to rethink its reliance on job incentives for employment generation in the business process outsourcing sector.  Incentives have generated some jobs, but the questionable working conditions in the contact centres can have detrimental long-term impacts on workers.

• Read the above article in full at The Conversation

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