By Percy Sithole

The agreement reached by the ICT Sector Summit raises opportunities and challenges for labour to take up in the post-summit process. Labour entered into the Information, Communication and Technology Sector (ICT) Summit because of general lack of systematic training and job losses in the industry.

Increasing cause for concern for organised labour is a rise in the demand for high skills and a decrease in the demand for lower skills. This is at a time when new technology is playing a greater role in the South African economy and demanding more skilled workers. These trends are making transformation difficult and prejudicing union members who were prejudiced by apartheid.

Resolutions passed at the ICT Sector Summit held in June 2002 and attended by Labour, Government, Business and Community, aimed at creating and retaining jobs in the sector, growing the sector, achieving universal service and access and transformation.

At the Summit the Nedlac constituencies acknowledged that the sector faces serious challenges. One of the serious challenges within the sector is how to minimise job losses, underemployment and increase job opportunities. Other challenges the sector faces include meeting the RDP goals of poverty alleviation, regional development and developing human resources. The sector needs to promote the historically marginalised in the sector, including women, youth and the disabled, particularly in poor and underserviced areas.

The Nedlac parties agreed that promoting local industries is one way to address the problems and challenges that were identified. Supporting initiatives like Proudly South African and encouraging local procurement by Government could help in job creation and the overall growth of the sector. The parties also felt the need to promote ICT usage at all levels of education. This would go hand in hand with promoting mathematics and science and design skills needed for the development of sectors using ICT.

Summit Agreement on Universal Service and Access

The parties reached a specific agreement on universal service and access. Importantly, it was agreed that affordability should underpin access. This is animportant gain in light of the fact that many poor households cannot sustain their telephone connections due to costs.

Summit Agreement on HRD

The parties to the Summit agreed to develop a Human Resource Development Strategy in partnership with relevant SETA’s. The plan must also be done in line with the Skills Development and Skills Development Levies Act through among other things; learnerships; internships; Recognition of prior learning for formal accreditation; Adult Basic Education; increased levels of education and training and the transfer of ICT skills. This agreement came out as a result of lack of implementation by the relevant SETA’s in providing relevant education and training.

Summit Agreement on Social Plan

For the purpose of the ICT Sector Summit, the Social Plan approach aims at maintaining and retaining jobs within the sector, through, for example, the creation of databases for both retrenched workers and procurement. Once the database has been established, employers would be able to identify retrenched workers who could fill their requirements.

A study, to be carried out through FRIDGE will investigate the best mechanism to establish an ICT development agency/institute/mechanism. Labour places great importance on the success of this study and the implementation of its findings. Amongst other things, the agency will assist retrenched workers in developing CVs and reference letters; it will also identify training and employment opportunities for redundant workers and provide financial and personal counselling. It is also envisaged that it will assist the unemployed, especially youth, women and the disabled to find jobs in the industry.

Agreement on Restructuring at enterprise level

Labour was satisfied with the agreement on the formation of Future Forums to address restructuring at the company level. These forums should seek to develop proposals to avoid job losses and satisfy the training needs of vulnerable workers. Training undertaken must be aligned with the National Qualification Framework be relevant to both workers’ jobs and career paths and conducive to the promotion of ICT usage generally.

Summit Agreement on Investment

Labour believes that increased investment is crucial to the creation of jobs in the sector. It was agreed that government should ensure that there are appropriate supply side measures available and accessible so that stakeholders review and make recommendations and promote investment in specific areas including; rolling out infrastructure particularly in underservised areas; software production and development, investment in local hardware development and production and labour absorbing activities for example call centres.

Summit Agreement on Procurement

The parties agreed that procurement should be used to help achieve the aims of the Summit process. The ICT sector has in the past, relied heavily on government and parastatal contracts for its development. The stakeholders agreed that procurement by government, parastatals and large private companies should focus on local content. It was agreed that a database of local suppliers would be developed and parastatals and government should include a sectoral code of conduct on procurement in their tender requirements and support Proudly South African. It was also agreed that government should retain its stand that international trade negotiations should not prevent the use of public sector procurement to stimulate local production and employment.

Summit Agreements on Research

The parties agreed to submit a proposal on research and foresighting for the ICT sector to the Fridge sub-committee under the Trade and Industry Chamber of NEDLAC. The aim of the study would be to: identify trends nationally and internationally that would assist growth in the industry as a whole; study changes in the market structure and impacts on universal access; appropriate technologies in servicing the poor and remote rural areas, undertake additional research to help ensure that universal service and access are achieved.

Guided by the above, the FRIDGE research should study and advise on mechanisms that would engage in foresight studies to determine the direction of technological advance and the likely impact on the structure of employment in the medium term; conduct research on the obstacles facing SMME’s and co-operatives, identify areas of employment growth and downsizing in the short to medium term; advise relevant SETA’s on education and training needs and finally provide a communication mechanism for determing projects and trends that are likely to create relatively large numbers of less skilled jobs. Such a mechanism should assists vulnerable workers to find jobs.

The study on the database would determine the means by enterprises in the sector could: register vacancies and with their permission, the contact details and skills of former employees in an accessible database and employ workers not on the database when no workers in the database meet their needs.

The above section gave a description of the summit processes. The challenge for labour is therefore the implementation of the summit agreement. The success in the implementation is underpinned by extensive research in the areas agreed upon. For all the specific agreements, Government, Labour, Business and Community agreed to submit proposals on research and foresighting in the ICT sector to the Fund for Research and Industrial Development, Growth and Equity (FRIDGE) under the Trade and Industry Chamber of NEDLAC.

Post Summit Processes

With regards to the post summit processes a number of activities are already taking place at different levels. For example the ICT steering Committee has been formed and has met twice to date. The Counter Part Group (IDC, FRIDGE) has representation from Government, Business and Labour and has met and refined the proposals for the studies and the terms of references for the Fridge Studies have been tabled at the Fridge Sub Committee. At the organisational level, a reference group has been formed andidentified areas of research and developed a workplan for the year.

[Percy Sithole is a Researcher at Naledi’s Sector Job Summit Project]