The COSATU-affiliated Southern African Clothing & Textile Workers’ Union (SACTWU) welcomes the High Court’s (Gauteng Division) dismissal of the Free Market Foundation’s (FMF)  application to declare Section 32 of the Labour Relations Act (LRA) as unconstitutional.  In terms of this section of the LRA, the Minister of Labour  is empowered to extend bargaining council wage agreements to non-party companies.

The now failed attempt by the FMF to rob workers from this significant collective bargaining right, is nothing but a brutal promotion of exploitative poverty employment conditions. Its main intention was to dismantle our country’s democratically  enshrined industrial relations framework, so as to promote labour market anarchy and poverty wages. We have successfully stopped this reactionary agenda.

We are delighted at the Court’s emphatic decision that “…the (Free Market Foundation) application cannot succeed and must be dismissed in its entirety…” (extract from page 45 of the judgment).

We will continue to resist any further attempts by the FMF or any of their supporting agents, to resuscitate this matter, and hope that they will now accept that they were wrong.

SACTWU was a respondent in the matter.

Issued by SACTWU