DA battles with quotas

Whites continue to occupy most of the top management positions at the DA-controlled Cape Town municipality and are well represented in other mid-level to senior positions.

This is according to the city's latest employment equity report, which also shows that coloured males make up 40% of the city's workforce, whereas women are largely under-represented.

The city has met its disability target of 2% and employs 604 disabled people.

But the municipality met its targets for able-bodied people, as set out in its employment equity plan, in only six of 48 staff profiles. The targets are based on Western Cape demographics pulled from the Statistics SA 2011 census.

As of 2011, blacks made up 35% of the Western Cape population, coloureds 46%, Indians 1% and whites 17%.

The city's mayoral committee member for corporate services and compliance, Xanthea Limberg, said that apart from promotions and new appointments, developmental training programmes would be used to meet targets

"The city cannot create new positions and bloat the workforce because that would not be sustainable," she said.

"Where positions are identified as a scarce skill and are critical, the city still continues to appoint candidates with the requisite skills regardless of race. Employees cannot be demoted to correct our employment equity because that would be unfair labour practice."

But this approach would make the city's 2019 deadline for meeting its targets even harder, according to labour lawyer Michael Bagraim.

"If a business is not expanding and is either stagnant or shrinking, its employment equity targets become almost impossible to meet because of the history," Bagraim said.

Targets include increasing the proportion of women permanently employed by the city from 34.5% to 47%, and having greater representation of blacks, coloureds and Indians in senior positions.

Currently, blacks are under-represented in five of the six occupational levels in the city's staff profile, whereas whites are over-represented in the top three levels.

Although the municipality's employment equity plan prescribed that employers implement affirmative action to ensure equitable representation, Limberg said the axe would not necessarily fall on departments that did not meet targets.

"We don't have ultimatums for any of our line departments not meeting targets. Cooperative agreements are in place, endorsed by senior management."