Employment: At the interface between social and economic policy - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Public Employment in South Africa:

Innovation in the Community Work Programme

Employment: At the interface between social and economic policy

• Employment is the critical interface between the social and the economic in

society:

– The personal impacts of employment/unemployment impact on inclusion and dignity:

• n families, communities, societies.

– The social problems that arise from unemployment – direct and indirect – raise the costs

• f poverty for the rest of the economy; and can translate into economic instability also.

– Few failings in the economy impact as directly on social outcomes (and social costs) as unemployment.

• If it is accepted

– that being productive is crucial to human well-being and social stability, – that even efficient economies with high rates of growth may not necessarily create employment for everyone who needs it; – And that markets don’t only fail to create employment in times of crisis

• Then there’s a need for an instrument to create employment even when markets

aren’t doing so; public employment programmes offer such an instrument:

• Also at the interface between social and economic policy.
• In a context of a global jobs crisis, a key moment for innovation in this area:
• With MGNREGA giving new meaning to the right to work – with international

significance

The context of unemployment in South Africa

• South Africa has a crisis of unemployment; the official rate hovers around

25%, but rises to 37% if discouraged work-seekers are included:

– Most of the unemployed are under the age of 35 – 60 % of the unemployed have never been employed – 59 % have been unemployed for longer than a year. – Concern at rising rate of unemployed matriculants (and graduates).

• Despite SA’s strong system of unconditional cash transfers, there is no real

social protection for the unemployed:

– The contributory Unemployment Insurance Fund covers only an average of 2- 3% of the unemployed at any point in time.

• The unemployed are dependent on ‘goodwill’ transfers within the

household and community.

• This means the cost burden of supporting the unemployed falls mainly on

poor communities

– Exacerbating poverty and inequality.

• Yet in the prime of their productive lives.

Public Employment in SA

• Since 2002 - a policy commitment to public employment

– The Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP)

• An outcome of tri-partite negotiation.
• Focuses on the following sectors:

– Infrastructure: increasing labour intensity – Environment – Social sector

• Review of its first phase in 2007: Main concerns:

– Limits of scale (1 million participants over 5 years) – Participants exiting back into poverty:

• because of the structural nature of unemployment.

Rationale for the CWP

• The Community Work Programme is a new component of EPWP, approved

as part of Phase Two.

• An outcome of a strategy process initiated by the Presidency;
• This recognised deep structural constraints in the SA economy
• These mean that sustainable market-based employment creation will take

time: but SA ‘sitting on a time bomb’.

• CWP designed to help significantly scale up public employment
• And also: to test/demonstrate the scope to adapt the concept of an

employment guarantee to SA conditions

• Inspired by MGNREGA.
• But with innovative and context-specific features of its own.

Current Status

• CWP an ant to India’s elephant

– (and not an employment guarantee

• But rapid growth in SA terms: to just under 100,000 participants

between April 2009-2011, at 74 sites.

• Strong policy support: Cabinet legkotla, July 2011: CWP mandated

to scale up to 1 million participants by 2014/15.

• CWP’s target is also to have a site in every municipality in this

timeframe

– Mainstreaming CWP across the society – Enabling systemic-level impacts instead of project-level impacts. – Creating the institutional architecture for an employment guarantee: if policy processes support that outcome.

Features of CWP

• CWP offers regular part-time work - on an ongoing basis

2 days a week = 100 days a year

• It is an area-based programme, with a minimum target of 1,000

people per ‘site’ (covering about ¼ of a municipality).

• The CWP uses community participation to identify ‘useful work;’
• Conditions of work are covered by the Ministerial Determination
• f Working Conditions in EPWP;

The minimum wage is R60 a day ($8.60) or R480 month ($68).

• CWP is implemented by non-profit Implementing Agencies
• Each site establishes an advisory Reference Group

Including ward councilors, local government, and civil society

• rganisations and key community actors (clinic sisters, school principals).
• A mandate of the Department of Co-operative Governance since

the end of its pilot phase, from April 2010.

Why Part-Time Work?

• A response to the structural nature of unemployment: to provide an ongoing

employment ‘safety net’ avoid participants ‘exiting back into poverty’.

• Regular part-time work – and hence income - provides an earnings ‘floor’;

– A small but sustained increase in incomes is more likely to contribute to a sustainable improvement in nutrition, health – lessons from cash transfers.

• Enables financial planning, mitigating risks of enterprise activity;
• Regular participation in work provides structure, social inclusion
• Part-time work enables the economic participation of women.
• Income from CWP supplements rather than displacing other livelihood activity

– This increases the net contribution in the hands of participants – Optimises the impact of resources from a macro perspective.

• Regular income to participants creates a sustained rise in consumption spending –

a more sustainable input into the local economy.

• Part-time work is unlikely to displace full-time work, regardless of the wage rate,

reducing concerns about labour market displacement

The concept of ‘Useful Work’

• In the CWP, participatory community processes are used to identify ‘useful

work:’

– 65% labour intensity at site level – Serving the public good, improving quality of life for communities – Absorbing the labour of 1,000 people a week.

• The pragmatic assumption is that there is plenty of work to be done in

poor communities: but where to begin?

• Innovation in community development approaches – the Organisation

Workshop

– Action learning methodology from Brazil, teaches task management and work

• rganisation skills.
• At the start of a site: a process of community mapping: to find out what

the needs are.

There are people with HIV and TB

• without

support There are

• rphans

without care Too many children are hungry Girls are attacked when they fetch water The youth are

• n the streets

and up to no good The school toilets need renovating The ambulance can’t get to the shacks They need help to wash, prepare food and more We can help them access social grants – and provide care also We can grow food We need to build a road We can renovate the youth centre, build a park Organise recreation activities We need a link to the clinic This needs the Department for Social Development That’s beyond CWP – can Local Government help? Let’s talk to the school governing body Maybe Department

• f

Agriculture can help with training?

Integrated development: driven from below

• Much of the work identified either requires or benefits from a link to local

government, or relevant national departments

• This creates a demand-driven pull for relevant services and support:

– a new driver of integrated development: from below.

• Also offers a new instrument for development delivery, where government

departments require a community interface

– CWP as a modality of delivery as much as a ‘programme’.

• Implementation by non-profit agencies, rooted at the local level, is creating

new capacities in civil society, and a new role as development partner: allowing local government a supportive and enabling role.

• Strengthened participation in local development planning – and new forms of

accountability.

• A new form of partnership between government, civil society and

communities is taking shape:

• A vision of a developmental state with ‘active citizens’ (National Planning

Commission).

‘The community work model’s importance lies not only in its scalability, but also in the way social mobilization is made integral to the rollout process, using non-profit agencies to implement the programme and creating new forms of partnership between government, civil society and communities. ‘The type of public employment that the commission advocates is not just income transfer in disguise. It is about inculcating a new mindset that empowers people to contribute to their communities.’ National Planning Commission Draft National Plan, November 2011

So, what work is done?

A set of anchor programmes are common at most sites:

• Care of many kinds:
• Food security:
• Youth recreation
• Support to schools
• Community safety
• Minor infrastructure works
• Maintenance and clean-up activities
• Environmental rehabilitation

Food security

• In SA, subsistence and smallholder

agriculture very limited;

• CWP: a new impetus to food

production: for vulnerable groupings unable to purchase or grow sufficient food.

• Food gardens at schools, clinics,

creches, and for vulnerable households, linked to home-based care.

– Linked emphasis on nutrition

• Reintroduction of agricultural skills: as

part of ‘work’.

• Spillover to households: food

production by participants

• Impacts on child welfare, school
• utcomes and health outcomes.
• In SA, CWP a vital platform for ‘zero

hunger’.

Restoring Dignity through Care

• Home based care: sick, elderly, child-headed households:

– Washing, cleaning, food production and preparation, basic healthcare, link to health services

• For child-headed households: assistance with chores, homework, care of

younger siblings

• Interface with health work: requires training, oversight, link to clinics.

– Botshabelo: decline in Multi-Drug Resistant TB attributed to CWP

• The human element: requires continuity of care

– And care for the caregivers

New policy opportunities from care work

• New forms of social and economic inclusion:

with empowerment through employment:

– Randfontein Centre for the Disabled – Orphans: scope to ‘graduate’ into CWP.

• An instrument to tackle the uneven burden of

care?

– CWP converts aspects of this burden into paid work at the community level. – Release productive labour in the household, enhance chances of exit from poverty

• Including participation in PEP.
• An added dimension of social protection:

creating an entitlement to community-based care – with communities resourced to deliver such care?

– And links to wider social services.

Schools Support

• Scholar patrols
• Repair of fences
• Vegetable gardens for school feeding
• Security patrols at break to make

schools safer places

• Cleaning the grounds
• Overseeing homework classes after

school

• Organising sports activity
• Teachers aides
• Cleaning the toilets daily
• Planting trees, landscaping
• Building play equipment, jungle gyms
• Creating, maintaining sports facilities
• Maintenance and repair of buildings

‘Useful work:’ Not just unskilled work

‘Today he gave her flowers’

The transformative potential of ‘useful work’

CWP unlocks what has been a ‘dead asset’ in poor communities: The power of labour. The necessary ingredients for this include the following: 1. Labour itself: unlocked by giving it a value

– Through the wages paid – But also: a social value from the nature of ‘useful work’ – ‘Decommodification of labour’ in CWP (Von Holdt and Langa) enhances the meaning of work for participants – Unemployed = sense of being useless to society: – In CWP, the work performed is socially useful = participants are validated and recognised in their communities.

2. Access to ‘capital’ – a form of ‘public’ capital, in terms of the tools and materials required to create social value; 3. An enabling framework for action: a mandate to act from both government and the local community: the social sanction to take initiative to solve common problems.

• Unlocking new forms of agency and capability – at the level of communites as well

as amongst participants: the antithesis of ‘dependency’.

• And providing a new development instrument for government.

Enhanced social protection Social inclusion Livelihood strategies Health Outcomes

CWP/PEP An instrument.. A platform… Socially useful labour as the common resource Child Welfare

Building ‘Co-operative Governance’

• This is why the CWP has been defined as ‘a government-wide programme’

(Cabinet legkotla July 2011)

• With an Inter Ministerial Committee and inter-departmental Steering

Committee to provide strategic oversight

• To optimise the synergies and scope for convergence
• The vision is clear…

..some of the impacts are already evident…

..but the formalisation of intergovernmental partnerships is just

beginning:

• Key shift in perceptions:

– From ‘turf’ concerns: ‘CWP is taking something away from our mandate’ – To recognition: ‘CWP is not a competitor: it is a new modality for development that we can use to deepen and extend delivery of our mandate.’

Challenges ………..many, of course

• Reliant on good community development skills

– An investment in strong civil society

• A view of the developmental state as a state that does

everything itself: vs partnership approach.

• Risks of capture by vested interests at local level.
• Importance of quality assurance of diverse work outputs
• Managing risks of corruption:

– a risk in any programme involved in large-scale payments and not specific to PEPs.

Scope for more shared learning in IBSA?

South Africa has drawn important lessons from India and Brazil Might some of the innovations in CWP resonate also?

• Brazil:

– ‘Productive inclusion’: a role for public employment?

• India:

– The scope for care work and social services as part of the ‘work’? – The scope for more skilled work? – The scope for NREGA to act as a platform for multiple mandates of government?

• In general:

– The different impacts and opportunities from regular part-time work – The interface – and the continuum - between cash transfers and public employment as part of a comprehensive strategy for social protection – The role of work in conferring dignity and the role of public employment in inclusive growth: filling the gap where markets fail, so that market failure doesn’t have mean social crisis.

Thank you!