Trade union Solidarity on Wednesday said the 2007 equity report released by the Employment Equity Commission was the most unreliable one ever produced. This after analysing the report which was presented to Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana on Tuesday.

"Among the mistakes is the commission's unwillingness to indicate by which percentage the representation of white men and women on top and senior management levels has declined," said union deputy secretary Dirk Hermann.

He said this illustrated a "a political agenda"

"Why didn't they indicate the decrease in the role of whites in the labour force?" he asked.

He said in 2001 white men formed 14.1 percent of the labour force while in 2007 the number stood at 10.1 percent.

Commenting on the commission's findings that there was a decline from 2003 to 2007 in the representation of black people of middle management level, the union said: "This is merely a result of an anomalous spike in the figures in the 2003 report, for which the commission gives no explanation."

It said that instead it showed an increase in black representation and a decline in white representation.

Solidarity said this report was the most "unreliable" ever released by the commission. The union highlighted errors in the number of company reports which had been analysed. It said that the 2003 report covered a total of 3.3 million workers while the current one only covered about 2 million.

"Because of the unlikelihood of there being no errors in the reports submitted by large employers this year, the decline in employers and employees represented by the report and the basic mathematical errors the 2007 Employment Equity Report is the most unreliable one released by the commission as of yet," it said.