INDUSTRY NEWS
Interfering In Domestic Employment Matters By The EFF: The Labour Court Responds By Rod Harper: CHM Legal
L
abour relations in South Africa is increasingly being placed in a precarious position with the involvement of political parties in employer/ employee disputes.
flaws in the Labour Relations Act, employers have had to deal with majority and minority unions, challenges by and between competing unions as well as with a proliferation of unions and now a political party.
This has resulted in the dispute resolution processes out in the Labour Relations Act (LRA) being ignored. This practice is gaining traction because aggrieved employees have turned to political parties such as the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) to champion their individual causes in the absence of what they deem as “inadequate” or “poor” representation by their unions.
Your instinctive response as an employer would be to brand such demands as ludicrous, unwarranted and inappropriate and in breach of the LRA. Your position would be that it is not the role of a political party to interfere employment matters. As such, you would feel entitled to rebuff any attempts to discuss such issues with a political party and even refuse to grant it access to your premises. Recent case studies at the Labour Court support this position that employers should not engage with political parties on domestic industrial relations issues.
For example, it is becoming common cause for political parties such as the EFF to contact an employer demanding their audience to discuss the dismissal of an employee following a decision to terminate the employee’s contract for serious misconduct. In response to this perceived vacuum at the workplace, the Economic Freedom Fighters (“the EFF”) saw an opportunity and set up a labour desk and sought to engage with employers and on occasion has elected to take over union functions. As a result of fundamental
12
SEIFSA NEWS
|
It appears that very little attention was given to the provisions of the Labour Relations Act by the EFF in respect of its participation at the workplace. Therefore, it became inevitable that an employer would respond to the EFF’s efforts to enter the workplace by referring complaints to the Labour Court.
NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2021
