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Keywords South Africa, Employment law, Affirmative action, Equal opportunities
Abstract South African companies employing 50 or more employees or those with a specified financial turnover, are required to comply with the provisions of the newly introduced Employment Equity Act. Prior to the introduction of the Act, large companies in the country had already introduced strategies of affirmative action to achieve employment equity. This paper highlights some of the strategic and operational concerns surrounding employment equity legislation in South Africa and reviews broad practices of employment equity in Malaysia, India, the USA, Canada, Britain and Zimbabwe. Lessons for the effective implementation of employment equity in South Africa are identified.
Introduction
The Employment Equity Act No. 55 of 1998 (Republic of South Africa, 1998a) aims to ensure that the legacies of apartheid in the South African workplace are redressed. In this regard, employment equity will, over time, be achieved by promoting equal opportunity and fair treatment through the elimination of unfair discrimination and through the implementation of affirmative action measures to advance black people, women and people with disabilities (referred to as designated groups). The act defines black people as Africans, Coloureds (mixed race) and Indians[1]. In this pursuit, the Employment Equity Act endeavours to ensure the equitable representation of people from designated groups in all occupational categories and levels in the workforce. The South African Department of Labour has furnished data relating to the geographical spread of the economically active population according to race, gender and disability. It is against these figures that employers of over 50 employees and those with certain defined financial turnovers are required to address target setting and related strategies of recruitment, training, development and retention of people from designated groups. In essence, employment equity focuses on a broad view of the end result. Measures of affirmative action will need to be adopted by employers, in order to ensure that this broad objective is achieved.
The rationale for employment equity
At a company level, the face of the South African workplace is becoming more diverse, although it may be argued that this process is not occurring rapidly enough. Through programmes of affirmative action (often previously called in South Africa, black advancement programmes, equal opportunity programmes, corrective action programmes, amongst others),...