The Constitutional Court on Friday set aside the decision by the Department of Correctional Services not to appoint or promote seven coloured applicants to the posts in the Western Cape.It said the department’s decision not to appoint or promote them constituted unfair discrimination and unfair labour practices.The court said those individual applicants who had applied for appointments to posts that remain vacant to this day must be appointed to those posts‚ and be paid remuneration and accorded the benefits attached to those posts.It said those individual applicants who had applied for appointments to posts that were later filled must be paid the remuneration and be accorded the benefits attached to those posts.SA condemns ‘cowardly terrorist attacks’ in NiceHe said the orders on the appointments meant that employees must be paid the difference between what they would have been paid had they been appointed to the posts to which they were denied appointment‚ and what they had been paid in respect of the posts they had occupied during the period.This case arose after trade union Solidarity challenged the department about the validity of its 2010-2014 equity plan.Solidarity represented nine coloured candidates and one white man who had applied for appointments or promotion within the department.The department had refused the appointments or promotions on the basis that they would not contribute to achieving national demographic representation in the department' s workforce.While the coloured people constitute more than half of the total working population in the Western Cape‚ they make up only 8.8% of the national population.Two arrested for attempted murder of traffic copsThe Labour Court did not declare that the department’s plan was invalid.Solidarity appealed against this judgment.In a majority judgment by Justice Ray Zondo‚ he said that in failing to use the demographic profile of both the national and regional economically active population to set the numerical targets for employment‚ the department acted in breach of its obligations in terms of the Employment Equity Act.Zondo denied applications for leave to appeal by three applicants.He found that in the case of the white man who had applied for promotion‚ the department had shown there was over-representation in the category to which he had applied.In the case of two coloured applicants‚ one was not recommended for appointment while the other applicant was later appointed to the post she had wanted.In a concurring judgment‚ acting Justice Robert Nugent said if racial proportions were to be the measure of a representative workforce‚ they must necessarily reflect the distribution of people making up those proportions.He said to do otherwise produced irrational anomalies‚ as was evident in this case.“The great majority of coloured people live in the Western and Northern Cape.”Nugent said he saw no rationality in restricting almost the half the population of the Western Cape to 8.8% employment opportunities in that province‚ while extending 8.8% of employment opportunities in Limpopo to 0.3 percent of the Coloured population. - TMG Digital..