Lawyers were milking the labour market regime “to death”, and their role in the system would have to be restricted, Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana warned during his budget vote speech in the National Assembly yesterday.

His comments are the latest broadside against the legal fraternity, which also came under attack during the government’s attempts to reform the Road Accident Fund, which spent altogether R1,3bn in legal fees in the 2006 financial year to settle compensation claims brought by accident victims. Of this, R517m was for its own legal costs and R802m for the fees of claimants.

Mdladlana said lawyers were unnecessarily complicating and prolonging cases in the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) to the detriment of both employers and employees. “In view of this, we have to examine closely the role and functions of legal representation within the CCMA in a manner that would limit the damaging role lawyers are having on our system,” Mdladlana said.

He noted that between November 1996 and January 31 this year, the CCMA had processed 1,069-million disputes with the average time to resolve conciliation being 26 days and for arbitration 48 days.

At a media briefing on Monday night, he said he would not rule out changes in the format of Setas, and was in favour of a system with fewer of them. There are 23 Setas. A formal Seta review would take place only in 2009, however. “Until then, things will stay the same,” he said.

Mdladlana was emphatic that the broad objectives underpinning labour legislation were sound, and would not be altered, but he conceded there were implementation and operational weaknesses that affected the efficiency and effectiveness of the labour market system. The International Labour Organisation had been requested to conduct a review of these institutional challenges.

He announced that a further amount of R300m had been ring-fenced in the 2007-08 National Skills Fund budget for 16 priority artisan trades. To qualify for a slice of this budget, Setas would have to adjust artisan targets in their service-level agreements, reprioritise their finances and contribute financially towards the identified priority trades. The R300m was in addition to the R316m already allocated to 13 Setas for scarce and critical skill development.

DA labour spokesman Mark Lowe criticised Mdladlana’s comments on Setas, and called for them to be completely scrapped. “How many more times is the minister going to back the Setas while promising a review?”  “The R5bn, scandal-prone, red-tape-laden Seta system is a highly interventionist and expertise-sapping bureaucracy that is ill-suited to the needs of a free market economy and to the implementation capabilities of an undercapacitated government such as the ANC’s,” said Lowe.

Linda Ensor, www.businessday.com