The Agricultural Business Chamber report on the public hearings on labour brokering
On 25 and 26 August 2009 the Portfolio Committee on Labour held public hearings on labour brokering. Various organisations including COSATU, FEDUSA, Women on Farms, Solidariteit, Association of Personnel Service Organisations, Confederation of Associations in the Private Employment Sector (CAPES), BUSA and others. There was a lot of focus on the negative aspects of labour brokering and examples were given of exploitative practices, also in the farming community. There were calls from particularly the trade unions to ban the practice of labour brokering altogether. Some presenters likened labour brokering to human trafficking. Organisations representing labour brokers emphasized the advantages of and the need for labour brokering. They pointed out that most of the labour broker organisations acted responsibly, exercised self-regulation and complied with requirements for skills training amongst other things. ANC parliamentarians in particular repeatedly asked why employers did not rather employ workers directly and seemed to grapple with who the employer was in a labour broking situation. Women on Farms stated that people employed by labour brokers for farm labour did not receive the minimum wage and were subject to abuse. CAPES proposed a public-private partnership to register labour brokers and regulate the industry. FEDUSA proposed that the industry should be better regulated rather than banned. BUSA made the point that; temporary employment services provided services that businesses could not provide themselves and employers did not have the capabilities to manage workforces themselves. BUSA also stated that organised business had grave concerns about the Department of Labour’s discussion document presented at NEDLAC. They felt that existing laws were sufficient to address abuses and that better enforcement of laws and co-regulation of the industry would provide solutions to the problems in the sector. View other parliamentary reports on the South African Agricultural Business Chamber website