I mentioned that in the company I work for the management has made it compulsory for all 1,500 of us to write exams set by a university. These exams relate to law which relates to our business. We hate going… and I just finished my course but now my exams are put off for 2 months!

The failure rate has shocked our management! Given that its work related and people deal with this stuff every day… but of course over 70% of our employees are black… management freaked out. The courses cost almost R5700 ($792) per employee. Each exam we write costs R1,800 ($250) per person! If you fail and rewrite the company must pay again.

The intake 2 before mine, had a pass rate of only 32%. Management was shocked. The last intake prior to mine had a better pass rate of 45%. Of 188 people, only 77 passed. In my own department (computers) – where the legal aspect is NOT a normal part of our work and where we are at a disadvantage, most people got 50% exactly – the highest so far was 56%. These are all non-whites – some of whom have University Degrees. I’ll probably be the first white in my department to write the exam.

It varies in other departments. Out of the 188 only 5 people got distinctions – 80(43)+%. I managed to get their names. 4 of them were white and one was Indian. The two highest scores out of all the courses done so far – were 90 and 91%. The 90% was scored by an Afrikaans woman I know and the 91% was scored by an Indian woman. Those are the two highest scores out of hundreds so far. There could be others… but those are the only ones my contact knew of.

I managed to learn that there were some scores which were as low as 8%-9% – which as far as I’m concerned must mean they (a) slept through ALL the lectures and (b) probably never read even 1 page of the notes. From what I heard from someone who saw the results… all these truly rotten scores were from blacks.

Apparently… the blacks are averaging 36-42% while the whites are averaging about 60-70% or thereabouts.

What is interesting… and I can’t answer this… is whether the MARKING OF THE EXAMS TAKES RACE INTO ACCOUNT! I say this because our RACE is clearly printed on the university register. i.e. Black, Indian, White, Coloured… that is written openly on the form!!! But let’s assume they are marking us equally… and not adjusting for race/culture… even so… the black scoring SUCKS.

I’ve heard that our exams… which I was due to write next week… were postponed for 2 months. I’m not sure what is happening.

There is something very weird about these exams. I heard some people in some departments were crapped on for not taking it seriously enough. More OMINOUSLY… at one meeting people were told that you must pass these exams “in order to be able to work here”. What I had wondered is if there is an OMINIOUS side to these exams… will they use these exam results as a reason to later RETRENCH (fire) people??? (That would be against labour law – but perhaps its a way of “sorting” people?).

Is this being done to improve the company, or is this related to firing people later? Its costing the company a lot of money…

A friend of mine in another department was told that if they fail… they will be given a 1 on their next evaluation… but I don’t believe that. This has not been seen by anyone in writing because I’m sure that is a violation of labour law.

What I don’t understand is why suddenly, 1,500 of us must write this exam after hours and in our time? I have wondered if they want to get rid of people. We’ll watch this… this whole process is very bizarre.

The company is already cost-cutting. I’m told that 50% of the Christmas functions were CANCELLED and postponed to January! And people were also told that no more functions will take place in working hours. All socials and functions will happen on weekends!

Bonuses and increases this year sucked – everyone was unhappy.

Previously, this company was riding the CREST of the Homeloan boom. So I think its belt-tightening and preparation for hard times. We were warned quietly last year already and now its worse. Maybe its only a matter of time before people are retrenched (fired)? We’ll have to see…

I’m trying to get more accurate statistics on our results… but this is all I could get so far. Jan.