BL Premium reports that SA’s labour laws and its collective bargaining structures are in line for an update, with a task team looking at proposals from the government, business and labour under the auspices of the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac).
Economists and business people have long called for SA’s labour relations to be reformed to make it easier, especially for smaller businesses, to do business. The government is keen to drive more job creation and employment equity. Nedlac executive director Lisa Seftel told the Nedlac summit on Friday that the forum – which brings together the government, business, labour and community – was providing input on proposed labour law reforms in line with its mandate. The task team was set up earlier this year and while details of the proposals under consideration have not been made public, most relate to improving and updating labour law in line with litigation, fixing anomalies in dispute resolution, and addressing deficiencies in the functioning of the labour courts, collective bargaining mechanisms and the right to strike. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said in its latest report on SA that the labour market needed to become more flexible to address persistently weak productivity growth and an employment rate which is lower than the average for the OECD and peer countries, particularly for the youth. “Wage bargaining remains confrontational and labour-employer relations have been ranked among the weakest by the World Economic Forum. The wage bargaining system suffers from a relatively high level of bargaining at industry level, declining representativeness of bargaining councils and inadequate extension of their agreements to non-members. As a result, wage growth is weakly linked to productivity growth,” the OECD report indicated. Meanwhile, Nedlac’s role in the social compact which President Cyril Ramaphosa promised in his state of the nation address in February is still being discussed. Employment & labour minister Thulas Nxesi said at the summit that the social compact was still a work in progress and it had not been easy.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Hilary Joffe at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
- Read too, Nxesi says Nedlac succeeded in lobbying to support businesses, workers through lockdown, at The Citizen
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page