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The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SACCI) has submitted comments on the amendment bills to the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) and the Labour Relations Act (LRA) to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Labour. The BCEA and the LRA constitute the foundations of South African labour law and play a crucial part in forming the conditions for the labour market – it is therefore of the utmost importance that they facilitate job creation and economic growth. Unfortunately, some of the proposed amendments to the BCEA and the LRA do exactly the opposite by imposing further costs on business to employ workers and increasing the rigidity in market for temporary employment services.

Some of the points of concern are as follows:
• An arbitrary limit of 6 months to temporary employment contracts
• Equal treatment of temporary and permanent workers after the 6 month term
• The extension of picketing rights to unrelated third parties
• The default requirement that an employer post the equivalent of 24 months of salary in an application for a review of arbitration
• The provision that temporary workers may able to sue for unfair dismissal due to a reasonable expectation of contract renewal or permanent employment
• The provision that provides the Minister with the power to determine increases on actual rates of pay in Sectoral Determinations.
• Provisions that aims to increase the power of the Minister to prohibit or regulate the use of sub-contracting, labour brokering and outsourcing.

In general, these problematic provisions increase the level of uncertainty in the labour market and serves as a disincentive to employ a larger workforce.

Despite these provisions, there are welcome and encouraging changes that the Department of Labour (DoL) can rightly be praised for. Some of these are:

• A requirement that trade unions hold a ballot and tally a majority in favour of a strike or lock-out before such decisions may be taken
• An overt prohibition against a material breach of a picketing agreement
• The extension of the members of the essential services committee to include representatives from labour, government and organised business

SACCI calls upon the DoL in the spirit of cooperation to tweak the problematic amendments in order to achieve greater certainty for the business community and to reduce the unnecessary costs to business that the amendments would otherwise introduce.

SACCI will present our comments to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Labour in July.