It sometimes takes a crisis for the ingenuity and creativity of the human mind to really ‘kick start’, and what a crisis we now face! The US has lost 2.6 million jobs in the past four months alone (Business Report, March 9, 2009). The lag effect of the US and European financial ‘free fall’ is starting to make itself felt in developing countries worldwide.

Speculation on the negative impact on South African employment statistics ranges between 20,000 and 40,000 jobs being lost in the first half of 2009.

While Automotive, Financial and Mining Sectors have borne the initial brunt of this ‘man made’ disaster, it is clear that the effects are beginning to trickle down throughout South African Industry.

Although the jury is still out on the downstream impact it is pleasing that the US President Obama has led the way with a bold and creative plan for turning the tide on job losses.

At a macro level, Public Sector investment plans dominate strategy worldwide. Thanks to the 2010 soccer world cup and a healthy balance of payments, South Africa’s own plans in this regard are opportunistic yet timely.

While at a macro level, these initiatives impact on overall employment statistics, at a micro level, on the factory floor, the reality is that skilled workers will in all likelihood be retrenched. This, despite the fact that South Africa is crying out for an increased skills base.

Talks of wage freezes, artificially reduced wages, shorter work weeks, extended plant shutdowns and retraining for redeployment are all ‘solutions’ being mooted as part of the solution for seeing out the ‘recession’. These solutions are often evaluated either theoretically or selectively on a micro workplace basis rather than in the context of the broader macro Economy.

Trade Unions in South Africa face an interesting dilemma. The mindset of the Trade Union movement is to preserve jobs while increasing wages and benefits. The Trade Union movement has for some time now vocally challenged labour market flexibility in South Africa, in particular the use of the legitimate and legalised Temporary Employment Services Industry.

Yet, the very answer to preserving jobs in South Africa may rest with the TES sector. The TES Sector is uniquely positioned and skilled to assess, retrain and redeploy skills within and across sectors.

No other employer in South Africa has the infrastructure and market knowledge to broadly identify needs, match skills across sectors, train to fill a gap, redeploy these skills while tracking benefits in respect of socio-economic impact and productivity levels, than the TES Industry.

No other industry introduces more people to the “formal world of work” than the TES Industry. With an excess of 15, 000 recruitment centers across South Africa, a partnership between Government, Industry, Trade Unions and the TES Industry, is in my opinion, the surest way of preserving both jobs and skills in South Africa.

Such a partnership will typically address one of Governments major challenges, namely sustainable job creation for the youth of South Africa – the so-called generation X and Y.

It is worth noting that the TES Industry is one of the largest and most successful implementers of Learnerships and skills programmes in the country. The ability of the TES Industry to project manage large scale learnership projects is surely one of the answers to preserving jobs through enrolling affected employees onto such learning programmes as part of an alternative to retrenchment.

In the process, skills are enhanced while wages are subsidised through SARS Learnership tax rebates and Seta related funding. This has specific relevance given the fact that there is certainly no shortage of skills development funding.

The scheduling, workforce optimisation and management of flexible working hours provides another alternative to selective retrenchment. It would be interesting to know how many of the unemployed can be gainfully employed within the overtime bill of the South African economy.

The TES Industry deserves recognition for its ability to project manage the employment relationship and scheduling of work for close to 750,000 employees in any given month. Where Industry is looking for complex scheduling management in order to spread fewer jobs across a broader affected workforce, without creating unemployment, these skills of the TES Industry should be drawn on.

The time has arrived for philosophical and ideological viewpoints to be replaced with practical solutions. In South Africa we tend to have the unfortunate culture of grandstanding politics without the necessary will, insight or knowledge to seeing how these viewpoints translated into practical and implementable solutions.

The TES Industry has a positive role to play in sustaining jobs in South Africa. Traditionally this role has been as an entry into the job market for first time work seekers and the upskilling of the same, often into permanent employment.

Perhaps, in this challenging time, stakeholders will recognize the unique contribution of an often underappreciated role-player as part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

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