More job losses expected for South Africa

·14 Sep 2015

The South African job market is on shaky ground, as the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) warns of more job losses in the country.

According to report by Business Day, CCMA director Nerine Kahn has warned of more job losses in South Africa, after the group has seen a spike in cases brought before it over the past two years.

The CCMA is an independent statutory body, providing information on good labour practice.

The first quarter of 2015 saw CCMA cases jump by 40%, with 23,231 jobs at stake compared to the same period in 2014, Kahn said.

According to the report, while big-scale job losses in the mining and manufacturing industries have been widely reported, smaller-scale losses (of 10 people or fewer) have seen a jump.

According to trade union, Solidarity, 45,000 jobs in 58 companies have been affected by staff reduction processes in 2015, alone.

Of this, close to 20,000 have taken place in the mining industry, and almost 10,000 have affected the telecoms field.

Other groups including the South African Post Office, SAA and Eskom account for thousands more.

However, outside of these large-scale retrenchments, the CCMA has reportedly dealt with over 13,020 small-scale retrenchments in the past two years, with 2,175 in 2015 so far.

These figures paint a worrying picture for the South African labour market, where over 36% of South Africans are unemployed by the broader definition.

The broader definition of “unemployed” includes the 2.4 million ‘discouraged job seekers’, who want a job, but have given up looking for a job, in 2015.

Stats SA data for the second quarter of 2015 shows that there are 36 million working-age citizens, of which 15.7 million were employed.