"It is becoming clear that banks, and other institutions, are using the Charter as a shield against genuine transformation of the financial sector, instead of as a catalyst for the change the sector sorely needs," Cosatu said on Thursday in a statement.
The trade union federation added that the Banking Association (BASA), the Life Offices' Association (LOA), the SA Insurance Association (SAIA) and other financial trade associations had boycotted negotiations on gazetting the Financial Sector Charter on Wednesday.
The government's deadline for publishing the charter for public comment was August 31 and if the charter was not gazetted by then, the generic Codes of Good Practice (CoGP) would apply to the financial sector, Cosatu said.
However a dispute had arisen months ago over broad-based black (BBBEE) ownership.
The Financial Sector Charter became deadlocked by the banks' refusal to increase black ownership targets to align with the BBBEE Act Codes of Good Practice.
"They (the banks) did not want the Financial Sector Charter to be aligned with the minimum ownership targets in the Codes, " Cosatu said.
It was agreed all other aspects of aligning the Charter with the Codes would be negotiated while the ownership dispute resolution process would continue on a parallel track.
It was decided that talks to resolve the ownership issue would be held between the Charter constituency principals -- Zwelinzima Vavi representing the Nedlac Labour constituency, Blade Nzimande of the Nedlac Community Constituency, and the Minister of Finance, Trevor
Manuel on behalf of government.
Cosatu has accused the banks of walking out of the negotiations. "They said progress by the principals was too slow, and that they were dissatisfied that the principals had not given them written progress reports."
Cas Coovadia, Managing Director of the Banking Association said, however: "We have boycotted nothing."
He added that it had been agreed that all elements of the Charter --except ownership -- would be subject to the Codes of Good Practice.
"We also want to include access to financial services and
empowerment over and above the dti codes," he said.
"The parties disagreed on ownership -- so we agreed to let
government, community and labour engage -- but that was six months ago," Coovadia added. There had been "no progress" in the tripartite negotiations.
"We met Wednesday at the gazetting meeting of the charter council and we asked about the ownership issue -- we were told that there was no report.
"We said we're one month away from the dti deadline and we think we can't continue discussing all the other issues without linking ownership to these issues."
Coovadia said that he had written to the Minister of Finance, requesting an urgent meeting.
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