@murdoc - The problem as Cosato sees it is this: The government want to make a wage subsidy available to allow young people to be easily employed. The DA and others are of the view that implimenting this subsidy would create 460,000 new jobs. Cosatu says that what would happen is that companies would get rid of older workers so as to employ young workers and hence pay lower salaries. Cosato says that it would also cause salaries to go down in general. The pro-subsidy lobby says that Cosatu is wrong in their thinking because the LRA does not allow companies to dump older employees in favour of cheaper younger employees. There are companies who do employ cheap labour and will trade their current labour for cheaper labour (but if that were the case they would do so anyway - subsidy or not) then there are companies who have skilled employees and who would not go through having to retrain the employees.

The bottom line:
Cosatu highlights is that there are a finite number of jobs in the market and that subsidising employment will not create new jobs.
The DA says that the subsidy would create more jobs.

I think that both views have merit.