The latest official figures put South Africa's labour force at 16.8 million people and reintorce a popular claim that the 'era of jobless growth' is now over. In the year until September 2005, more than 650,000 jobs have been created according to the official statistical agency's Labour Force Survey (LFS). Peter Jacobs reports. GOVERNMENT and business say that this positive jobs report is due to the country's booming economy- peaking at a growth rate of 4.5 per cent in 2005. At a deeper level, officials confidently say, this robust economy and jobs growth are in turn outcomes of the efficacy of the country's sound market-friendly macroeconomic policies. If this is true, then these 'macroeconomic rules' need to be kept in place or selectively reinforced to reach the 6 per cent growth target set to halve unemployment and poverty from 2014 onwards. State officials are upbeat about this silver lining that suggests, after a decade, South Africa's macroeconomic economic strategies are beginning to translate into jobs. However, they agree that the battle against unemployment is far from over, partly due to the risk of an economic slump. Current worries arise from markets the fact that the broad measure of unemployment, which includes so-called discouraged workers, is in the order of 45 per cent of the labour force. By any standard this is an enormous figure - an unemployment crisis.
Thus the need for extraordinary measures captured in the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative (ASGI) as a new engine to slash unemployment and poverty by 50 per cent within 9 years.
Trade unions and big business support the main thrust of ASGI, WITN COSATU developed as yet in South Africa. vowing that it will bring more pressure to bear on government and capital to end unemployment and poverty.
Given this urgency to address SA's unemployment crisis, it is important to check if the touted 'desperate interventions' will create sustainable jobs at living wages. Flexible labour
Since 1994, the main electoral slogan of the governing party has been 'jobs and a Casual workers, the neo-liberal norm, are usually barred from joining trade unions and have virtually zero legal protection. Moreover, it is rare for a sacked worker to retain union membership, and no independent union of the unemployed has better life for all'.
But the hollowness of this promise became evident when job shedding gathered pace as a result of the state's neo-liberal economic policies.
Labour market flexibility, a major component of this package, simply meant more insecure and low-paying jobs and jobless economic growth.
Today, these same policies are credited for the turnaround in which the economy is generating 30,000 jobs per month, leading government to assert that it is track to reach the UN's 2015 Millenium Development Goals.
Critics have pointed out that these are mainly parttime jobs in construction and retail trade and estiMales include survivalist small business that are hardly sustainable and easy to count.
Moreover, risks of recession have increased and workers in these insecure and low-paying economic activities are usually the first to be sacked.
Now the state started pinning all its confidence on its new job creation plan, ASGI, with its emphasis on public works programmes and private public partnerships.
ASGI basically copies the existing expanded public works, offering the jobless six-monthly contracts for a maximum of 2 years at an average wage of R60 per day (US$10) that do not lift a family above the poverty line.
It combines flexible labour markets with state investment for the prosperity of the private sector and markets without sustainable jobs at living wages. 'End job losses and poverty'
A jobless crisis across South Africa poses a direct threat although casual workers are the first to be sacked.
Casual workers, the neoliberal are usually barred from joining trade unions and have virtually zero legal protection.
Moreover, it is rare for a sacked worker to retain union membership, and no independent union of the unemployed has developed as yet in South Africa.
What is to be expected then is for job losses to erode the membership and related financial base of trade unions and thus compel unions to react.
Energetic interventions on the part of the trade unions have largely been ineffective to make any significant dent in unemployment to date. While unions have successfully fought for a Jobs Summit in 1998, subsequently • renamed the Growth and Development Summit (GDS), this has degenerated into an annual talk shop. Out of these summits emerged the Job Creation Fund (JCF) -financed from a day's wages that every union member donated -which has provided work to only 15,000 unemployed in 7 years.
Compare this figure to at least 30,000 jobs that may be axed, according to the unions, as the state drives ahead the further privatization of transport and electricity utilities.
Using trade union investment companies to promote 'social entrepreneurship' or broad based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) also failed to address job losses. COSATU's 'end jobs losses and poverty' campaign that has gained momentum as the country swung into the 2006 local government elections mode, has fizzled out after sparking political tensions within the tripartite alliance.
Clearly, trade unions can more effectively fight against unemployment if they pay attention to how they struggle and the nature of their demands. For example, in its 'jobs and poverty campaign', COSATU strikingly exposed the links between unemployment and other social afflictions hitting working people - such as homelessness and exclusion from privatized social services- making it possible to forge a genuine united front with other social movements and political organizations.
crucial short-term demand absent from current campaigns is a reduction in the working day without a loss in pay to allow employment for more workers.
Furthermore, public works must guarantee the unemployed a living wage, include them fully in its management and pave the way for democratic workers control and self-management in a planned economy. Peter Jacobs is a member of APDUSA.