Mail & Guardian reports that with his department’s focus shifted towards job creation, newly-appointed Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi says he will not risk sidelining worker’s rights to create more work.  

He stated last week:  “There are some who argue that an any jobs [approach] — which yields more jobs — is better than the decent jobs we are striving for.  As South Africans, we are not going back to those dark days — certainly not under the watch of this government.”  One of the biggest hurdles Nxesi faces in his tenure as minister is to balance the administration’s plans to create jobs with the department’s mandate to protect workers from exploitation by championing their rights and regulating the labour market.  In the department’s budget vote speech earlier this month, Nxesi emphasised that realising its new mandate would require co-operation with other government departments and the private sector, which it depended on to “propel employment”.  Nxesi dismissed speculation that the department would have trouble reining in the private sector through regulations when it depended on the sector to drive employment.  Instead, he argued that a vigilant department that worked closely with organised labour and the private sector would help to stabilise the labour market and drive job creation.  In his budget vote speech, Nxesi also indicated that the department would leverage the Unemployment Insurance Fund and the Compensation Fund “to preserve jobs and to invest in job-creating initiatives”.

• Read Sarah Smit’s informative report on Nxesi’s approach to a number of issues involving his department at Mail & Guardian

Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page