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Fin24 reports that the Department of Employment and Labour (DEL) says it will reintroduce provisions to make balloting before and during a strike secret.
Secret ballots have been opposed by many trade unions who want the decision to strike decided by a show of hands. This has enabled intimidation, which has been rife in SA’s labour history, particularly where strikes are long or become politicised. Workers at Sibanye-Stillwater’s gold operations are now entering the third month of a strike with no apparent end in sight. Sibanye’s management claims that the strike is not popular and is being sustained by intimidation, but the trade unions involved, namely the Association of Construction and Mineworkers Union (AMCU) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), deny that this is the case. In a court application in 2019, AMCU successfully overturned guidelines on balloting introduced in 2018 that included the requirement for secrecy, on the grounds that the minister of labour did not have the power to determine this through guidelines. DEL acting deputy director-general Thembinkosi Mkalipi said that the department wanted to bring back the secrecy requirement through an amendment to the law. The proposal is one of many that government tabled at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) last week, as part of a review of the Labour Relations Act (LRA) and other labour legislation. The proposed amendment, after discussion in Nedlac, will be sent to Parliament as a proposed amendment to the LRA. Mkalipi said that government did not challenge the decision in the AMCU case because it believed that the court was correct in limiting the minister’s power.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Carol Paton at Fin24 (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page