Arbitration between steelworking employer bodies starts

Published Feb 19, 2013

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Wiseman Khuzwayo

The private arbitration between the National Employers Association of SA (Neasa) and the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of SA (Seifsa) on whether the latter represented individual employers in the sector began yesterday, Neasa chief executive Gerhard Papenfus said.

Neasa, an employer organisation with 20 000 members, said Seifsa had no role to play in the Metal and Engineering Industries Bargaining Council (MEIBC) because its constitution did not make provision for individual companies to qualify for membership. Neasa has for long been a thorn in the side of Seifsa and the MEIBC.

In December, it successfully challenged the extension of a national wage agreement reached at the bargaining council to increase wages in the industry by 8 percent and 10 percent in July 2011 and July last year, respectively.

The agreement was signed by Seifsa and the unions.

Neasa did this by launching an application for a review at the Labour Court. In December, the court ruled that Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant’s decision to extend the main agreement, which was not signed by the organisation, to non-parties was invalid and accordingly stood to be set aside.

This was also because the unions represented 49.47 percent of employees covered by the agreement as opposed to the required 50 percent to allow for extension to non-parties.

Judge André van Niekerk suspended the order for four months to enable the minister to consider whether or not to make a decision to extend the agreement in terms of section 32 (5) of the Labour Relations Act. The act states the minister may extend the agreement if the parties to the bargaining council are representative, and the minister is satisfied that a failure to extend the agreement may undermine collective bargaining.

Yesterday, Papenfus said it would be illegal if the minister re-extended the agreement because the bargaining council was not constituted according to its constitution at the time of the agreement. He has already informed his members that the MEIBC’s collective bargaining levy agreement is no longer applicable with effect from January 1 this year.

Papenfus wrote: “Any deductions from your employees in this regard will be deemed as an unauthorised deduction and employees will be entitled to file claims against the employer. We are fundamentally against this arrangement within the employer unfriendly MEIBC dispensation and will oppose such extension.”

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