BMF creates legal fund to take on companies violating Employment Equity laws

The Black Management Forum has established a litigation fund with the aim of taking legal action against “gross violations derailing transformation in South Africa”, the organisation said.

The fund is in line with a resolution to ramp up advocacy against non-compliant companies, which was taken at the BMF’s 43rd national annual general meeting, said a statement issued on Monday.

“The BMF has historically played an important role through advocacy to advance the national objectives of socio-economic transformation. This is one of the four pillars of the raison d’être of the BMF,” the statement said.

The forum was seeking to “reinforce its monitoring capacity” through the establishment of the fund, the statement added.

The fund would “serve as a tool to enforce transformation in an effort to achieve justice, fairness and equity”, BMF said.

According to BMF, the fund would help the forum finance its efforts to hold public interest companies accountable for not achieving employment equity targets; to champion cost-effective “alternative dispute resolutions” in EE-related matters, in line with the Employment Equity Act and King IV governance guidelines; and to ensure that social and ethics committees prioritised employment equity and transformation as key performance indicators for public interest company boards.

In an interview with BMF president Andile Nomlala in 2018, Fin24 reported that Nomlala intended to focus on promoting both good governance and transformation. The BMF would lobby for enforcement of legislation, Nomlala said at the time.

According to data by the department of labour’s ninth Commission for Employment Equity (CEE) annual report (2007-2008), there were 18.8% black people in top management and in the 18th CEE report (2017-2018), the figure decreased to 14.3%.

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