The State of Collective Bargaining in South Africa: An Empirical and Conceptual Study of Collective Bargaining

Literature › Works

Shane Godfrey; Jan Theron; Margareet Visser (2007). The State of Collective Bargaining in South Africa: An Empirical and Conceptual Study of Collective Bargaining. DPRU Working Paper 07/130, Development Policy Research Unit, University of Cape Town. Development Policy Research Unit, University of Cape Town.

Type	working paper
Scope	Post-1994 South African economy
Method	mixed
Period studied	1973–2007
Regions	South Africa, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal
Themes	unions strikes, labour markets wages, transition post apartheid, manufacturing industrial policy, mining migrant labour, business and state, methods data sources
Citation key	godfrey2007

Argument

The study asks how South Africa's post-1996 Labour Relations Act framework for collective bargaining is working, using case studies of bargaining councils, statutory councils, non-statutory forums (mining, autos, pelagic fishing), and decentralised bargaining (retail, food manufacturing), plus 25 small-firm interviews. It finds that the LRA's intended scheme (organisational rights, sector-level bargaining, statutory councils, workplace forums) has not materialised. Bargaining councils are resilient but confined to the secondary sector and strained by falling representivity, a tougher Department of Labour line on extension, and informalisation. The authors conclude the framework needs rethinking and propose a stronger Department role or a reintroduced judicially enforceable duty to bargain with reformed workplace forums. Section 3 gives a brief historical background of pre-1994 bargaining, the 1973 strikes and the Wiehahn reforms.

Evidence and method

Semi-structured interviews with bargaining council officials, unions, employers' organisations and Department of Labour officials; 25 interviews with small firms; collective agreements; Chamber of Mines data; Du Toit et al. (2006) and earlier DPRU research; secondary sources (Anstey 2006, Webster 1999, Nicol 1985, Butcher and Rouse 2001).

Findings

• Under apartheid's dual system, bargaining was essentially confined to White, Coloured and Indian unions; Black workers had virtually none. (p. 28)

  Black workers could form and join trade unions but these operated without legislative protection and could not join industrial councils. Collective bargaining for Black workers was therefore almost non-existent

• The 1973 Durban strikes produced a new generation of unions that pioneered plant-level recognition agreements and prompted the Wiehahn Commission. (p. 28)

  The strikes that erupted in and around Durban in that year gave birth to a new generation of unions, most of which were non-racial, but which in practice largely organised and represented Black workers.

• The Wiehahn-era amendments removed the exclusion of Black workers from the definition of 'employee', opening registered unions and industrial councils to them. (p. 28)

  The most important amendment was to the definition of an ‘employee’ to remove the exclusion of Black workers, thus allowing them to join registered trade unions and be directly represented on industrial councils

• Once the new unions joined industrial councils, wage gains for labourers rose relative to artisans. (p. 30)

  Nicol shows that over the period 1975-1984 the median real wage for labourers covered by industrial councils rose, whereas the real median wage for artisans declined

• Number of councils fell sharply but covered employees rose, mostly through public sector councils. (p. 38)

  The number of bargaining councils has declined steeply in recent years, but the number of workers covered by bargaining councils has increased.

• Bargaining councils cover only about a third of workers in bargaining-unit grades. (p. 58)

  it covers only about a third (33 per cent) of all workers that would normally fall within a collective bargaining unit.

• The Department of Labour's stricter representivity threshold undermines councils; agreements with 30-39% representivity will not be extended. (p. 41)

  if the employer or union parties have a representivity figure in the 30 per cent to 39 per cent range, then the council will definitely not get its agreement extended.

• The Cape Building council's recruitment of informal firms lowered party representivity, a perverse result of the rules. (p. 46)

  But the parties on the council did not adopt effective strategies to recruit these firms or their employees. So, as the number of registered firms increased the representivity of the parties declined.

• Small firms' main complaint was weak enforcement rather than extension itself, and every respondent accepted the need for regulation. (p. 84)

  every respondent agreed that labour regulation was necessary. The need for some floor of rights and standards therefore appears to be uncontentious.

• The auto National Bargaining Forum aimed to end the apartheid wage gap and linked pay, grading and training. (p. 97)

  In 1995 the NBF reached its first three-year agreement. It was designed to put an end to the ‘apartheid wage gap’.

• Gold mining bargaining under the Chamber of Mines has fragmented into company-level wage deals; productivity agreements have failed. (p. 89)

  The de facto situation is that the Chamber has more than once simply provided a forum in which its members reach separate or individual deals with union parties, particularly in respect of wage rates.

• The authors judge the LRA scheme a failure and call for rethinking the framework, including a revived duty to bargain. (p. 126)

  or does one need to re-think the framework given the changes that have occurred in the labour market over the last decade? We are unequivocally of the latter school