City Press reports that a potentially game-changing amendment to labour law, followed by a precedent-setting Constitutional Court case, have still not delivered the goods for labour broker workers.  

They face a number of tactics by employers to avoid the cost implications of the so-called deeming provision raging from instantaneous retrenchments as soon as workers get “deemed” to be permanent workers to “equalising” their wages to that of previously nonexistent or more junior job categories.  Some companies are said to have brought in expensive lawyers to negotiate very unfavourable contracts with unrepresented workers.  After dozens of cases involving thousands of workers, the outcomes for workers are “poor”, said Bhavna Ramji, an attorney at the Casual Workers’ Advice Office.  The NGO has been helping labour broker workers at a number of well-known companies make use of the new “deeming” provision inserted in the Labour Relations Act in 2015.  This provision deems a labour broker worker who has worked for a client for more than three months to be an employee of the client.  This was accompanied by an “equalisation” provision allowing the deemed workers to insist on the same remuneration as the client’s pre-existing employees.  But employers have found ways around the impact of both provisions, Ramji said.  Loopholes in the law are part of the problem, but the lack of organisation and bargaining clout among the largely un-unionised labour broker workforce is also contributing to constant semi-victories for brokered workers.  This informative report goes on to examine recent cases illustrating the problem.

Read the full original of this report by Dewald van Rensburg at City Press

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