Suspect employment equity practices at the Department of Correctional Services
Fin24 reports that the Department of Correctional Services has been rapped over the knuckles about its employment equity practices. The Cape Town Labour Court has ruled that the department must abide by national and regional demographics when it recruits and promotes staff. To me, this means that the Department of Correctional Services hasn’t been complying with the Employment Equity Act thus far, which is something that designated employers must do. I could be mistaken but isn’t the Department of Correctional Services a designated employer and as such is obliged to adhere to the Employment Equity Act?
According to sources, designated employers are those who employ 50 or more people and have a turnover which is more than that set down in Schedule 4 of the Employment Equity Act. The National Defence Force, National Intelligence Agency and South African Secret Service, although they employ more than 50 people and probably turnover more than the required amount of money, aren’t classified as designated employers. I don’t see the Department of Correctional Services on this list…
So why did the department not comply when they knew they had to? This morning, I read that they are even appealing against the Labour Court’s judgement saying that it doesn’t need to be implemented.
Um, I think that some people need to re-read their employment equity legislation…
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Lia Marus is the editor of HR Pulse. She has a BA in French, Italian and Linguistics from UCT, an MA in translation from Wits and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Wits Business School. She is currently studying towards her LLB through Unisa. Lia started her career off in corporate communications, where she worked as a sub-editor, researcher and marketing coordinator. She then heeded the call of the publishing world and went into the business-to-business publishing field. She worked as a sub-editor as well as a chief sub-editor. Before joining ITWeb, she managed an HR guidebook at a leading international publishing company. |
