New labour bills will cost jobs: DA

"Shockingly badly drafted" labour bills, gazetted over the holidays, have the potential to cause hundreds of thousands of job losses and must be withdrawn and rewritten, the Democratic Alliance said on Monday.

DA labour spokesman Ian Ollis said the four labour bills were intended to address legitimate problems, but were in fact "misguided" and did not serve the interests of the majority of South Africans.

"The four bills that have been announced by the Zuma administration need to be halted in their tracks until the array of problematic provisions they contain are removed," he told a media briefing at Parliament in Cape Town.

"The problem is with the Cabinet and the department of labour, which are acceding to Cosatu's demands, with little regard for those who stand to lose jobs, or, indeed, to the plight of South Africa's unemployed, who will find it harder than ever to find work should these measures be promulgated."

Ollis said the bills, if promulgated, would create relatively few new permanent and "potentially unionised" posts, but would destroy hundreds of thousands jobs in the South African economy.

An impact assessment, commissioned by the department of labour, had found that 2.13 million jobs, classified as fixed term, temporal or seasonal, would be jeopardised by the proposed legislative measures.

"The equation is simple. We can either have a few more permanent jobs and a lot more unemployment, or we can have many more temporary jobs and lot less unemployment," he said.

"Not all will lose their jobs. Some temporary workers might successfully be rehired in a permanent capacity.

"The majority, however, in all probability will be made redundant, with the impact assessment going so far as to conclude that the end result would be 'serious destabilising effects in the labour market' -- a quite unprecedented level of condemnation for a government commissioned report."

Ollis said Cosatu wanted to see the proposed laws promulgated as they would boost union numbers.

"The vast majority of South Africans would prefer lower unemployment. This ultimately is why we believe these proposed measures are wrong-headed and need to be reconsidered," he said.

The DA saw a number of legal challenges being mounted against the bills should they be promulgated.

"These laws have been shockingly badly drafted and are not of the calibre of being brought before the public and Parliament," Ollis said.