Legislative backing of the SETA learnership contracts : a myth or reality

Abstract

Learnerships are a relatively new training method that the South African skills development system has adopted to address the country’s shortage of skills.1 Incorporating a number of role players and having multiple objectives, learnerships have been hailed as one of the effective ways to address unemployment by encouraging industry to participate in skills development at the same time propelling employment equity.2 The provision of tax incentives and fulfilling the broad based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) has made learnerships a viable way of getting industry involved in addressing skills shortages and also to serve as a remedy to the problem of unemployment among the previously disadvantaged citizen groups.3 The success of the learnership implementation process is guided by the legislative backing which has been created to regulate the scheme amongst the role players; namely, the learner, the SETAs and the employer.4 For industry funded learnerships, the employer plays a dual role as the sponsor of the programme as well the workplace provider, who should ensure that the learner is able to practically implement the theoretical knowledge they acquire in the classroom. The learnership contracts can therefore be referred to as tripartite contracts or agreements as they guide the relationship among the three main role players in the learnership programme, namely, the learner, the employer and the training provider. This research explores the legislative backing of the learnership contracts with the aim of investigating to what extent the obligations and rights created by these contracts are enforced and enforceable and the likely consequences of the lack of enforceability of the contracts. The research will explore what obligations and rights are created by the contracts in light of the challenges that have been encountered in the implementation of the learnerships, top amongst which has been a high level of learner drop outs.5 The challenges and effects of the enforceability or lack of thereof of the contracts are explored with a view to explore possible improvement measures which can contribute to the body of knowledge on practical implementation of the programme. Furthermore, the research looks at other systems that have implemented and are still implementing learnerships with the aim of exploring how the relationships amongst the role players have been managed in a way that has had a positive impact on the successful implementation of the scheme.