Today's Labour News

LOADSHEDDING / TOTAL BLACKOUT

Employers urged by Institute for Risk Management to be ‘proactive’ in planning for total electricity blackouts

BL Premium reports that businesses in SA are being told to make sure they are prepared to react to a total electricity blackout.   This would not only require an immediate response plan to ensure the safety of all workers, but businesses also need to know how they will manage the impact of such an event on their operations in the days that would follow. Christopher Palm of the Institute for Risk Management SA noted that while reassurances have been given that the chances of a total electricity grid collapse were low, it had now become incumbent on the SA risk community to develop clear plans for a blackout. “We believe the country has reached a stage where preparation for a complete blackout, which could last up to a fortnight, now need to be factored into strategic planning for the remainder of the year. It is better to have an unused plan that none at all,” he pointed out. Businesses also had to develop a plan of approach and action, which would need to be communicated to all employees. Staff associations and unions would need to be provided with this information. The declaration of a national state of disaster over the electricity crisis has raised many questions about the legal rights of employees to make changes to workers’ terms of employment in the event of a complete blackout or prolonged high stages of load-shedding. Fiona Leppan of Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr said employers needed to be proactive in putting agreements in place with employees in the event of a total blackout. Hugo Pienaar, also of Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, recommended that actions such as short time, unpaid periods of leave, temporary layoffs, suspensions of employment or, ultimately, retrenchments, could be considered for a framework agreement, but there must be absolute open and transparent discussion between employers and employees. Such an agreement, said Leppan, should have a dispute resolution mechanism built into it to avoid industrial action as far as possible.

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Denene Erasmus at BusinessLive (subscriber access only). Read too, Companies, unions need to develop frameworks for dealing with impact of energy, water outages, at Engineering News

Now that load shedding is a disaster, government wants to know how to keep the internet going

Fin24 writes that some 16 years since load shedding first started, the government has asked for a list of communications infrastructure – such as cellphone towers and broadband switches – that should perhaps not be turned off. On Tuesday, communications minister Mondli Gungubele started a somewhat ponderous process towards that end. Using the powers of the state of disaster declared in respect of electricity, he instructed the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) to talk to providers about "what constitutes critical electronic communications and broadcasting infrastructure". Icasa must then recommend to Gungubele what should be exempt from loadshedding, a recommendation he will discuss with Cabinet.   The state of disaster declaration broadly sets out two goals, namely ending load shedding, and blunting its consequences. But to what extent telephone and internet services can be made safe from load shedding is not clear. Cellphone towers, for example, are connected to the national grid in all kinds of ways, many of which are hard to isolate. The new regulations make provision for licence obligations on providers to be relaxed if that would help. Those obligations include the likes of limits on how many calls cellphone networks may drop, and the minimum internet speeds that consumers should see. Gungubele also instructed Icasa to set up a system "to issue public service announcements on the national state of disaster".

Read the full original of the report in the above regard compiled by Phillip de Wet at Fin24

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY

Eskom employee found safe after kidnapping ordeal

The Citizen reports that an Eskom employee has been found safe following a kidnapping ordeal. The staffer was released this week, at a location south of Johannesburg, after he was kidnapped on 16 March. Condemning the abduction of the employee, Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena said the employee was recovering from his ordeal. “The employee’s car was shot at multiple times, and the employee was forcefully taken by seven assailants. He was later released at a location in the south of Johannesburg and had to be admitted to hospital as a result of injuries sustained from being assaulted by the attackers. The matter is now subject to police investigation,” Mokwena said. Eskom did not indicate the motive for the employee’s kidnapping.   It also wouldn’t confirm the level of seniority of the employee.

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Faizel Patel at The Citizen. Lees ook, Eskom-werker ontvoer, by Maroela Media

Security contracts for Gauteng hospitals in past financial year cost R708m in irregular expenditure

TimesLive reports that the Gauteng Department of Health has irregularly spent more than R700m on security for the province’s hospitals over the past financial year, while it has admitted to spending R59m on current month-to-month contracts. Gauteng health and wellness MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko on Tuesday announced that the department was in the process of advertising a new tender, which is anticipated to be awarded early in the new financial year of 2023/24.   “The current situation is unacceptable, as the department is spending more than R59m on month-to-month security contracts. The contracts are rolled over irregularly as there is no contract in place, only service level agreements are used to manage the services,” she advised.   Nkomo-Ralehoko confirmed that the past two tenders were advertised and cancelled due to irregularities raised with the specifications by auditors. The DA’s Jack Bloom offered an alternative explanation, saying: “I suspect there has been deliberate sabotage of the security tenders, as politically connected people [most] likely benefit from the existing contracts. These contracts are poor value, as there have been major thefts at hospitals like Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg and Chris Hani Baragwanath.” He noted that contracts were last awarded in 2014 but instead of lapsing two years later, were “extended on a month-by-month basis despite annual warnings by the auditor-general that it is irregular expenditure”. He welcomed the MEC's announcement on the advertising of the contracts.

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Khanyisile Ngcobo at BusinessLive

Other internet posting(s) in this news category

• Cape Town e-hailing drivers cautioned against going into crime hot spots, at News24

EMPLOYMENT PROTEST

Former Ekurhuleni community health workers demand re-employment

GroundUp reports that about 50 former community health workers who worked in Ekurhuleni protested outside the Gauteng health department’s Johannesburg office on Tuesday to demand they be re-employed.   According to the protesters, they represented 382 health workers employed on fixed-term contracts annually whose jobs were terminated by the City of Ekurhuleni in June 2022. The workers said some had started work in 2009 and they were paid R3,500 a month since late 2021. They went door-to-door, testing, counselling and creating awareness about HIV/Aids, TB and sexually transmitted diseases.   They also referred patients to clinics or hospitals and did Covid-19 screening during the pandemic. They say many community health workers were hired as permanent workers by the health department in 2020, though they were excluded. Protester Ayanda Ntuli said they were “promised numerous times that we would not be left behind in the absorption process,” but it was stopped in 2020.   A representative of the health department received and signed the memorandum. Motalatale Modiba, a spokesperson for the Gauteng department of health, said: “It is important to highlight that the group of people are not community health workers appointed by the department but were in the employ of different municipalities in Gauteng.” He said a thorough and consultative process had been concluded in July 2020 when the department absorbed 8,619 community health workers into permanent positions.   The workers will attend an arbitration hearing at the Benoni Bargaining Council on 3 April.

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Kimberley Mutandiro at BusinessLive

ILLEGAL MINING

‘Brazen’ zama zamas cost Thungela Resources R300m to rehabilitate previously rehabilitated areas

BL Premium reports that illegal mining in Mpumalanga continues to pose a challenge for thermal coal miner Thungela Resources.   During 2022 the company had to spend R300m to rehabilitate areas that had already been completely rehabilitated before illegal miners moved in to operate the old mine shafts. This cost of crime estimate, according to Thungela CEO July Ndlovu, does not include the cost of stolen goods and additional security. “We are seeing illegal miners becoming more brazen. In some instances, they are accessing our operating mines to steal copper cables. Some of them collude with our own security guards to steal diesel, cables and conveyer belts,” he observed. According to Thungela, these criminals are “highly sophisticated” and their operations form part of organised crime networks. “These networks are increasingly turning to violence, which puts the lives of our security personnel and employees at risk, while at the same time increasing criminal activity in the communities in which we operate,” Ndlovu said. He did not want to speculate whether the criminal syndicates involved in crime at Thungela mines were connected to those suspected of having infiltrated Eskom’s coal supply chains in Mpumalanga. Thungela has been working with the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks) to curb the threat posed by illegal mining.   However, despite the involvement from the Hawks, Ndlovu said that judging from “what is happening to Eskom infrastructure and at other mines” they are “not on top of the situation yet”.

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Denene Erasmus at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

REMUNERATION TRENDS

South Africans’ salaries remain lower than a year ago, despite job market stabilising

The Citizen reports that the latest BankservAfrica salary data suggests that the job market is stabilising and that, although salaries increased slightly in February, they are still lower than a year ago. This is said to illustrate just how difficult the economic environment remains for many companies that have to deal with rolling blackouts, high production costs, high interest rates, and falling demand due to slow growth.   According to the BankservAfrica Take-home Index (BTPI), take-home pay recovered slightly in February 2023.   The average nominal take-home pay increased to R15,186 in February, the highest level since October 2022, but it remained 1.8% below the R15,469 measured a year ago. The slight increase came after two consecutive months of notable declines in the number of salaries paid into the bank accounts of South Africans. BankservAfrica’s data suggests a few jobs were created in February. “Although it was less than a thousand, stability in the job market is welcomed amid a challenging economic environment. The job market is still recovering from the heavy losses due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic,” economist Elize Kruger observed. “With little indication of a notably different economic environment in 2023, but rather even lower economic growth for 2023 compared to 2022, the job market is likely to remain lacklustre,” Kruger added. She said BankservAfrica’s data confirmed the negative impact of inflation on salaries, with an 8.3% decline in the average real take-home salary in February 2023, compared to a year earlier. The BankservAfrica Private Pensions Index (BPPI) remained flat compared to the previous month at R10,054, 6.2% higher than a year earlier and slightly above the monthly average in 2022.

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Ina Opperman at The Citizen

Other internet posting(s) in this news category

• Public wages: How much do state nurses, porters and cleaners earn? at Fin24

IMPACT OF GENERATIVE AI ON WORK

New study identifies jobs most exposed to generative AI

According to a new study by OpenAI in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania, about 80% of jobs will potentially be impacted by the rapid developments in the capabilities of generative AI. The research found, in certain instances, that at least half of certain professionals' jobs could be affected by generative AI. This did not necessarily mean the jobs could be replaced, but they could be influenced or enhanced. The research aimed to look at the early potential impact of GPT-4 on the labour market in the US specifically. GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) refers to systems that can perform several tasks like answering questions, summarising text, generating lines of text and so on, such as ChatGPT. The purpose of the research was to analyse the "exposure" of work tasks to generative AI. It found about 80% of the US workforce could have at least 10% of their tasks affected by the introduction of GPTs, and about 19% of workers might see at least 50% of their tasks impacted. "The influence spans all wage levels, with higher-income jobs potentially facing greater exposure … considering each job as a bundle of tasks, it would be rare to find any occupation for which AI tools could do nearly all of the work," the study indicated. Among the jobs the study suggested would experience the most influence from GPTs were: accountants and auditors; lyricists and creative writers; interpreters and translators; writers and authors; news analysts, reporters and journalists; legal secretaries and administrative assistants; and public relations specialists. Twitter owner Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and more than 1,000 other people have signed a recently published open letter calling for a six-month pause on the development of large-scale AI systems. The letter cited fears of the potential risk the rapid rise of these developments could have on "society and humanity".

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Yamkela Mdaka at News24

VISA RELIEF

Home Affairs grants relief to visa applicants due to backlog

BL Premium reports that the Department of Home Affairs has granted relief to applicants of long-term visas or waivers who are awaiting outcomes of their applications by extending the blanket concession to 31 December. The measure is an attempt by the department to address the effect of the backlog in processing waiver and visa applications on foreign nationals. The backlog, which runs into the tens of thousands and extends back to 2016, is due to a lack of personnel in the department and the long processes involved in processing an application. This extension is further to an extension to 23 March that was issued in September. The decision means that long-term visa or waiver applicants are permitted to legally remain in the country until 31 December, pending the finalisation of their applications. The decision relates to applicants whose waiver application outcomes are still pending. These are long-term visa holders (work, business, study, relative and accompany spouse) who have applied for a waiver. The extension will allow the department time to process the applications and for applications to collect their outcomes and submit requests for appropriate visa renewals.   All visitors on short-term visas whose validity was issued for less than 90 days are excluded from the concession, and are required to depart before or on the date of expiry of the validity period of their visas. Organised business has repeatedly raised concern about the delays in processing visas, which it says harms investment and economic growth.

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Linda Ensor at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

NATIONAL SKILLS FUND

Hawks target 10 companies in R5 billion National Skills Fund graft probe

The Citizen reports that a criminal investigation by the Hawks is underway into corruption and fraud by 10 companies that received millions from the National Skills Fund (NSF) but never delivered services. Department of Higher Education and Training deputy minister Buti Manamela and NSF bosses briefed Parliament’s portfolio committee about a damning Nexus forensic report and that by the Auditor-General, which found that R5 billion of the entity’s funds were unaccounted for in two financial years.   Manamela said the investigations, including that of a ministerial task team appointed by Minister Blade Nzimande last year, saw some implicated senior officials resign from the department.   “Since the receipt of the Nexus forensic report, we have interacted with the SIU and the Hawks have also begun investigations,” Manamela advised. The SIU is seeking through civil litigation to recoup NSF funds from the service providers, mostly contracted for teaching and learning, that fleeced millions of rand from the entity. In relation to the AG report, work streams have been created and are working to correct NSF systems and near-failure governance that marred the entity. According to Mabusela, five NSF officials and two others at the Ekurhuleni West Tvet College have been suspended and charged. The seven senior officials’ hearings, headed by a legal panel, will get underway this week.

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Getrude Makhafola at The Citizen

Achieving turnaround at the National Skills Fund is a slow process

BL Premium reports that the slow process of re-establishing the National Skills Fund (NSF) and putting it on a sound footing is expected to be finalised by end-March 2024 at the earliest. The fund, which is financed from the skills development levy imposed on employers and which has the aim of upskilling jobless young people and training artisans, has been in a mess for years.   Plagued by maladministration, poor governance, fraud and corruption, the NSF has been subjected to a forensic investigation, a probe by a ministerial task team and the normal annual audit by the auditor-general. The Hawks are also investigating fraud, corruption and money-laundering in the fund, which is in talks with the Special Investigating Unit to pursue civil liability matters as well. A forensic report by Nexus Forensic Services found there were reasonable grounds for suspicion that corruption, fraud or theft had occurred in many of the NSF’s projects. Deputy higher education & training minister Buti Manamela told members of parliament’s higher education, science and innovation portfolio committee on Wednesday that while there had been some improvement in the fund, the situation was not yet satisfactory in terms of financial management. He was confident however that a turnaround would be achieved as the recommendations of the various reports were implemented. An acting CEO, David Mabusela, a CFO, fund manager director and ICT director have been appointed and other vacant positions have been advertised.

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Linda Ensor at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

RETIREMENT FUNDS

FSCA cancels 6,757 inactive retirement funds after 16-year slog

BL Premium reports that the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) has cancelled 6,757 inactive retirement funds that were found to have no members, assets or liabilities, with most also not having properly constituted boards in line with the Pension Funds Act. The deregistration of the affected funds comes after a lengthy cancellations project was first initiated by the regulator in 2007 but was delayed after becoming the subject of litigation, allegations of corruption and three independent investigations. However, after all legal proceedings related to the matter ended up going in favour of the regulator, the FSCA was on 28 March finally able to release its findings on the deregistration of inactive retirement funds. The origins of the cancellation project have their roots in the 2005 realisation by what was then the Financial Services Board (FSB), which noticed that only 7,684 of the 13,735 retirement funds registered in SA at the time submitted annual financial statements. By 2006 the situation had worsened with only 4,384 of 13,132 registered funds submitting financial statements. After picking up discrepancies in some of the financial statements, the FSB discovered that many of the retirement funds were not active, which prompted the regulator to initiate a verification exercise to identify the active retirement funds. What it uncovered was that the majority of the more than 13,000 registered funds in existence when the cancellations project kicked off in 2007 were considered dormant, orphaned or inactive.

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Garth Theunissen at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

G4S PRISON BREAK DISMISSALS

Fired Mangaung prison guard boasted about brand-new car before and after Thabo Bester's escape

TimesLive reports that one of the three G4S Correction Services prison guards who was fired for assisting “Facebook Rapist” Thabo Bester in his daring escape from Mangaung Correctional Centre boasted on social media about his brand-new car before and after the audacious jailbreak.   Security supervisor Senohe Matsoara, who was dismissed by the security company in September, was believed to have been in cahoots with Bester and aided him in his elaborate escape on 3 May last year. Matsoara posted a picture on Facebook in January 2022, of a certificate from the Volkswagen Menlyn dealership congratulating “Mr Senohe Ishmael Matsoara on your beautiful Volkswage T-Roc 2.0”. Also in January 2022, he posted pictures of himself in front of a new car.   He again posted pics of a brand-new T-Roc in September, when he was dismissed. Matsoara’s colleagues said it was strange that a G4S employee at the prison, earning a monthly salary of between R15,000 and R18,000, could afford a car of more than R500,000 without a second income. “You must remember that this guy escaped in May. Senohe was suspended in September and (he) immediately bought a brand-new VW T-Roc, as if he was sticking his middle finger [at] the situation,” said a warder.   Two other wardens were dismissed for their roles in the escape. One was also a security supervisor, while the other was responsible for the CCTV camera system in the section which Bester escaped from. G4S earlier this week confirmed it had dismissed three of its employees as a result of their conduct on the day that a fire broke out in Bester’s cell. G4S is the contractor of the privately-run Mangaung maximum-security prison where Bester was serving his sentence.

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tankiso Makhetha & Oliver Meth at TimesLive