Article for Allan Seccombe of the Sunday Times

Working Together to Build Tomorrow Today: Bargaining Councils, a New Way Forward.

As part of the SABCOHA vision to have a far reaching impact across small, medium and large sized organisations and to work not only at the individual company level but also an industry level , bargaining councils have been identified as key strategic partners in mitigating the impact of HIV and AIDS within business.

Bargaining Councils are valuable points of entry into business for the following reasons:

• They can through a process of consultation, ensure high level commitment by both employer and labour organizations.
• They can be a legitimate partner who can receive funding
• They are able to reach small, medium and large sized organisations
• They are able to reach businesses at a local, and national level
• They can provide a hub for standardization and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms
• Many have close parallels with SETA’s who can be involved in supporting the training initiatives

Given this, SABCOHA has been involved in two fundamentally different but equally important bargaining council HIV/AIDS initiatives, namely the Bargaining Council for the Cleaning Industry in KwaZulu Natal (BCCCI KZN) HIV/AIDS project and the Metal and Engineering Industries Bargaining Council (MEIBC) HIV/AIDS Project.     Through a process of consultation with these councils, a model and way of working within councils has been developed by the project management team lead by Genieve Lemmon of Lemmon and Associates.   The key to the success of these projects relies on total council commitment both from an employer and labour organization perspective. From this foundation of strong leadership the other pillars of the projects can be built such as strategic partnerships, policy development and review, assessment and benchmarking exercises, employee awareness, capacity building, EAP, treatment and care initiatives and regular continuous monitoring and evaluation.

In order to protect member interests, and to play its’ role, within the development, and protection of civil society, the MEIBC (Metal and Engineering Industries Bargaining Council), as the representative of both business and labour interests in conjunction with SABCOHA has embarked on developing and implementing a comprehensive program of action, within defined time parameters, for which the Council, and its’ members will be responsible.   Given that the MEIBC covers over 220 000 employees and approximately 10 000 companies, this council is well positioned to have a significant impact on HIV/AIDS within the industry.   Comprehensive research  commissioned by the council into HIV/AIDS and Absenteeism, covering over 1100 companies in the Metal and Engineering industries, has indicated that there is a critical need for education and training within the industry and for support and guidance on good practice in terms of HIV/AIDS workplace programmes.   In general the research indicated that larger companies where more likely to have HIV/AIDS policies and budgets in place as opposed to smaller companies, again highlighting the urgent need for co-operation and co-ordination.

The BCCCI HIV/AIDS project has highlighted many of the difficulties working with HIV/AIDS projects at an industry level and in particular within the contract cleaning industry. These have been:

• Implementing a strategy at an Industry wide level with implications for companies that are associated with the Council, and potential resistances to this.
• Demographics: The nature of the working population is largely female, Zulu-speaking with generally low levels of education and literacy which impacts on training delivery and other interventions.
• Geographics: The workforce is distributed over a large variety and number of sites.
• Access:  There are difficulties with regards to access since there seems no single site where employees meet or congregate in large numbers other than at their paypoints or on contract cites where the permission of and partnership with the client is required.

Nevertheless, given these constraints, the project has been effective in building strong strategic partnerships that have both directed and supported the programme.   The Services SETA has been instrumental in providing the seed funding for the programme whereas InWEnt Capacity Building International Germany, has both overseen and co-funded the capacity building components of the programme.   In addition to this the project has developed a strong relationship with the department of health through which an innovative and pioneering condom distribution programme is being developed.

Approximately 130 AIDS Ambassadors have been trained as well as approximately 20% of the industry’s companies have undergone managerial training in HIV/AIDS workplace programmes.   Results from the VCT, assessment and benchmarking surveys indicate that approximately 33% of the population sampled in the contract cleaning industry are infected with HIV/AIDS.   The report also indicated that:

The majority of employees knew the basics about HIV but that the levels of knowledge are superficial.    Only about two thirds of employees knew that a mother could transmit HIV to her child
There is also a hard-core 20% of employees who do not believe that HIV causes AIDS.
Condom use remains inconsistent, less than half used a condom during the last sexual encounter.
Almost a third of respondents believe that they can recognise someone with HIV. 
This is of concern because such people show a lack of knowledge about the illness and may also not protect themselves adequately if they believe that they can tell if someone is infected
A significant proportion of employees still have conservative attitudes towards women’s rights.

Clearly it is important that education, prevention and treatment interventions are considered and implemented in this industry.    As part of the sustainability of the project current efforts are focused on scaling up, follow-up capacity building, cost-impact analyses, condom distribution and nutrition and care programmes.

Given the scope and reach of bargaining councils and the successes and example set by these 2 projects it would be the hope that other bargaining councils follow suite.

For more information on these projects: 

Contact SABCOHA on 011 8804821, or the project manager Genieve Lemmon at genieve@el-assoc.co.za.