South Africa: More bat shit crazy

The Times live ( Zimbabwe ) reports

We do employ white people: Woolworths

Woolworths did employ white people, contrary to media reports stating otherwise, its said in the advertisement, published in the City Press, Rapport and Sunday Times newspapers.

"Over the past few days, many things have been said about our recruitment practises -- specifically, that we don't employ white people. That is simply not true.

"Woolworths does employ white people. We employ women and men of all races -- white, black, coloured, Indian, as well as people with disabilities, and we will continue to do so."

I missed this and it actually looks like a bit of a beat up by reactionary white South African's to an industrial event, that said the whole event was an exercise in stupidity.

Trade union Solidarity began a campaign against the retailer on Wednesday to get it to retract job advertisements it believed discriminated against whites

Solidarity had sent Woolworths a letter on Tuesday demanding that advertisements exclusively open to "African blacks" or "Africans, coloureds and Indians", be modified so people of all races could be considered.

General secretary Dirk Hermann said the Woolworths' advertisements constituted unfair race discrimination.

In the advertisement on Sunday, Woolworths said there were certain areas of its business which were seriously under represented.

It was in these areas that Woolworths was looking for candidates from certain groups.

On the face of it yes it was a bloody stupid but if it was a genuine effort to get a balanced work force then it is hardly racism. Woolworths is a large enough organisation to have jknown better. It should probably be fined for a breach in advertising standards. 

"Because like all of South Africa's major companies, we're committed to transformation," it said in the advertisement.

Woolworths is also embroiled in another labour controversy over contracts.

On August 27, it said no retrenchments were taking place after it was reported that 593 employees faced early retirement or retrenchment if they did not sign new contracts.

However, the company said it was merely seeking to transfer about three percent of its staff on old contracts to a new system requiring them to work weekends.

If staff did not want to work under the new contract, they could leave with a voluntary severance payment, or take early retirement if they qualified.

It said about 80 percent of the affected employees had accepted one of the voluntary options proposed, while one percent had not.

The SA Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers' Union, which said the offer was to the detriment of workers' rights, said 177 workers were being retrenched.

The two issues seem to be seperate although there is an understandable fear that people are being forced to sign unfavourable contracts or threatened with redundancy and replaced with new black / coloured employees. That of course would be increadably discriminatory to all races.