Fight over cut in coloured job quota

Bay metro faces labour court challenge

THREE Nelson Mandela Bay municipal officials have turned to the Port Elizabeth Labour Court to challenge their bosses’ approval of an employment equity plan they feel unfairly discriminates against coloured people.

The municipality has reduced its employment target for coloured staff from 23% to 13%.

The officials – Willie Blundin, Dean du Plessis and Allister Jordan – believe the new employment equity plan, for 2013 to 2018, is geared to only benefit black Africans and does not reflect the racial demographics of the metro.

Blundin is an assistant director in the public health department while the other two are property management officers in the human settlements department.

They claim that for 10 years the municipality had planned its workforce targets based on the demographics of the Bay.

This changed in November 2013, when it decided to use national and provincial figures as a guideline for employment equity.

Based on these figures, the city would hire more black people and fewer coloured people.

The plan – which The Herald has seen – was approved by the council in February last year.

Black Africans make up about 60% of the metro population. Provincially, they are about 75% of the economically active population. Based on this, the municipality now wants 75% of its workforce to be black Africans.

Similarly, coloureds make up about 23.5% of the metro’s population, but only 13% of the economically active population in the province. So the metro wants only 13% of its staff to be coloured.

Whites make up 14.36% of the metro’s general population, Indians 1.11% and “others” 0.84%.

But of the economically active provincial population, whites comprise only 10.5% and Indians 0.8%, meaning fewer jobs with the municipality for them as well.

-Rochelle de Kock