The EFF has set the ball in motion in the party’s long-standing policy to have thousands of workers contracted to government and municipalities be insourced or permanently employed.
The red berets’ MP and treasurer-general, Omphile Maotwe, has announced her intention to introduce a private member’s bill that seeks to make the party’s insourcing position the law of the land.
The explanatory summary of the draft bill, published in the government gazette, lists the reasons the party believes the bill must become law. Maotwe, in the explanatory summary, says government in all spheres, including organs of state, provides services to citizens.
However, she argues that in order to do so it contracts third parties who provide these services and who bring their own employees to deliver these services.
She says the services includes but are not limited to: cleaning services; security services; gardening services; construction of buildings and infrastructure; maintenance of buildings and infrastructure; information technology services; catering services; auditing services; transport services; administration services; and healthcare-related services.
Maotwe says the outsourcing of workers has created many administrative problems, noting that this includes inflation of prices for contracts through manipulation of the tendering system.
She also mentions that the system has also collapsed the ability of the state to deliver the necessary services to the people and exploitation of the workers who are employed by the service providers to deliver services.
“By contracting third parties who provide outsourced workers, the government in all spheres, including organs of state, is often making use of persons whose labour is exploited, whose employment is on a casual basis, providing minimal job security, whose labour is under-paid, who receive minimal or no benefits and who are accordingly not properly protected by labour legislation,” she argues.
“The draft bill seeks to provide a comprehensive legislative mechanism to bring an end to these problems and challenges brought about by the outsourcing of services and functions provided by government, and to provide for insourcing of services that are required on a regular basis by the organs of state.”
In October, an internal feasibility study conducted by the Ekurhuleni metro found that it will be costly and unsustainable to insource security guards and cleaners.
The EFF in the city has rejected the findings of the study.
In 2018 in the City of Johannesburg, the EFF put forward a motion to insource 4 000 security guards. The council adopted the motion and the workers were insourced.
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