Francesca Villette
TRADE union Solidarity has launched a nationwide campaign to stop the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) appealing against a court order that the department should use regional and national racial demographics when appointing staff.
In 2013, ten DCS employees, nine of them coloured and one white, told the Cape Town Labour Court that the DCS had hired employees in contravention of the Employment Equity Act.
They argued the department had acted unlawfully by applying racial quotas which did not take into account regional demographics.
In what was regarded as a victory for the Western Cape’s coloured community, Judge Hilary Rabkin-Naicker ordered the DCS to take immediate steps to ensure that both national and regional demographics were considered when setting employment equity targets.
The DCS, however, decided to appeal against the ruling last year.
At a press conference in Cape Town yesterday, Solidarity launched its protest campaign which included a petition to be handed to court before the department’s appeal is heard on February 19.
The 10 DCS employees were the first to sign the petition yesterday.
Chief executive of Solidarity Dirk Hermann said coloured people constituted 51 percent of the Western Cape population. But the DCS applying national demographics in appointments meant eight percent of coloured people would be considered for employment.
“A decision to apply the national racial demographics in the Western Cape is neither justifiable on the grounds of legal or moral arguments. Taxpayers in the Western Cape cannot allow their money to be used in an attempt by the state to obtain a court ruling whereby they themselves would be discriminated against. We therefore urge the public to sign a petition in order to put pressure on the DCS to withdraw its appeal,” Hermann said.
The department argued that racial targets should be national and not regional, because the DCS was a national body.
Correctional Services spokesman Manelisi Wolela said: “Correctional Services urges everyone with a stake in the Western Cape matter currently before court to respect these processes. No one should undertake extra-judicial processes that could serve to undermine the court processes currently under way. The department believes another court may arrive at different conclusions on matters we are appealing against.