Trade union Solidarity has now launched a Centre for Fair Labour Practices. The Centre has presented a five-point plan to testing the ideology of racial representation in the Constitutional Court.
Dirk Groenewald, who is head of Solidarity’s Centre for Fair Labour Practices, says the plan was announced after input from top senior legal councillors and academics who scrutinised the problems experienced with the government’s current affirmative action model. They came up with ideas and solutions for an alternative model. ‘Participants agree that affirmative action in its current form should be terminated.’
The Centre’s five-point plan involves testing certain key principles through litigation. These include:
• The constitutionality of employment policies and practices aimed at achieving representation in terms of the national racial demographics;
• The constitutionality of certain BEE practices and legislation;
• The constitutionality of applying the principle of racial representation in the private sector;
• The constitutionality of the penalty clauses in laws and regulations as well as the amendments to be adopted soon; and
• The abolishment of affirmative action in all government departments that have attained broad representation.
Groenewald said Solidarity established the Centre to ensure that affirmative action was implemented in line with the constitutional purpose and intent thereof.
