Labour brokers are behind the exploitation of workers, Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said on Friday.

"More and more employers are getting round the labour laws by replacing permanent, secure and at least relatively well-paid jobs by temporary, insecure and generally low-paid jobs, where workers' rights are flouted, and the labour laws sidelined," Vavi said in a speech prepared for delivery to the Confederation of Associations in the Private Employment Sector (CAPES) in Boksburg.

Vavi said that this was leading to a sharp decline in the quality of employment and the super-exploitation of workers.

"Labour brokers, in our view, are one of the main driving forces behind this process, which is why our members have given us a clear mandate to campaign for an end to the practice."

Vavi said that unemployment currently stood at 24,5%, "though by the expanded definition that includes workers who have given up looking for work, it is at a staggering 34,4%".

He said that according to a recent study by the University of Cape Town, 58% of African households lived in poverty.

However, Vavi said that even the ranks of the employed contained a large and growing number of "working poor".

These were workers who were denied the protection of labour laws because their job had been casualised.

Vavi said that Cosatu had welcomed the African National Congress (ANC) 2009 election manifesto, which included a commitment to create "decent work and sustainable livelihoods" as one of the five priorities areas for the next five years, and to this extent explicitly contemplated the need to address the problem of labour broking.

"What we have a gripe with is the system that undermines the employment relationship that should exist between the suppliers of labour - the workers - and those who receive services or who benefit from labour.

"The permanent middleman arrangement is what causes a problem of abuse and super exploitation," he said.

Vavi said that brokers liked to emphasise the benefit of lowering their clients' labour costs "but this reinforces our view that the whole rationale of companies using labour brokers is to cut their wage bill and enable them to evade the payment of benefit."

Labour broking also made it easier for the true employer not to have to comply with its obligations.

"Workers often cannot identify who is legally their employer, from whom they can enforce their rights."

Vavi said that another problem caused by labour broking was the progressive de-skilling of workers, as a result of the short-term and irregular nature of the contracts associated with labour broking and other forms of atypical labour.