Having practised in the labour law field for the past 35 years, I have never experienced such a deluge of retrenchments such as I have in the last 2 years.

Our government, and in particular the Department of Labour, has been warned over the past 2 years that we are going to face unprecedented retrenchments, shrinkages and jobless growth. The very system of our labour legislation is designed to protect only those that are employed, which in turn does the opposite. Over and above the fact that businesses are frightened to create new jobs, the jobs that are in existence are being threatened because of the ever increasing onerous conditions on keeping people employed. Furthermore, the increases are not matching productivity, resulting in businesses looking to downsize wherever they can. Those businesses that are able to work smarter and bring in machinery and concentrate on investing in areas of their business where they need less staff, they are doing just that.

It is far too little far too late for the CCMA to now state that they want to look into a job security strategy. Even the greatly heralded “lay-off scheme” has been an enormous failure. Over and above the fact that business community have not been able to see the value in the scheme, the trade unions themselves are refusing to recommend or even suggest the use of the Department of Labour scheme of lay-off.

The trade union Solidarity has said that we are going to lose a further 45,000 jobs during the course of this year. My calculation is that it is going to be much greater than that. I sit with small companies on a daily basis and each one is looking to possibly pursue a retrenchment programme. These are the companies that one would expect to create jobs and not shrink. However, the financial crisis within the business community has reached epidemic proportions, and the sentiment is so negative that even if the business is showing good returns, the decision makers are looking to “batton down the hatchers.”

The reality is that our government has not seen this crisis coming despite warning, and furthermore our government is not able to tackle the trade unions on an arm’s length basis. We need to change.

Michael Bagraim