Johannesburg - The country’s collective bargaining system should be scrapped or drastically reformed before it implodes and leads to anarchy in industrial relations.
This is according to representatives of employer bodies who addressed the 28th Labour Law conference in Sandton yesterday.
They pleaded with the Labour Department to change laws they considered as a hindrance to the growth of industry and job creation.
They mentioned problematic relations between big employers and small to medium companies in various bargaining councils.
They also slammed the Labour Department for extending collective bargaining agreements to employers who are not party to wage agreements signed in councils.
Gerhard Papenfus, chief executive of the National Employers Association of South Africa (Neasa), accused Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant of turning a blind eye to their problems, which had led to mass job losses in the metal and engineering industry.
“The system has to change. Firstly the act (Labour Relations Act) has to change to include the voices of SMMEs, who are the foundation for growth. The National Development Plan says if we want to create jobs, 90 percent will have to be created by SMMEs.
“But you take their voice away. You allow big companies sitting in Johannesburg to determine a wage, and then send that to an employer sitting in Kuruman,” said Papenfus.
Although Neasa and the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (Seifsa) differ on many aspects in the application of collective bargaining in the steel and metal industry, they both agreed that collective bargaining was in trouble and drastic measures needed to be made.
Seifsa’s Lucio Trentini said his organisation and its affiliated associations were seriously considering the possibility of alternatives to national collective bargaining.
“Any alternative model must be centred on creative and innovative arguments built around competitiveness, sustainability, productivity, employee participation and sharing of effort and reward.”
Unions have often dismissed the sentiments that seek to present collective bargaining as a stumbling block instead of a remedy to a sensitive subject in the lives of workers and employers. Wages have always placed unions and employers at odds with each other.
Cosatu has said in the past it considered collective bargaining a great gain for workers and believed it was the only method guaranteed to protect vulnerable workers.
However, the Department of Labour’s Thembinkosi Mkalipi defended the Labour Relations Act and the bargaining system.
He threw the ball back in the employers’ court, saying the government could not intervene, but that the social partners would have to agree on what they wanted.
THE STAR