The new Labour Court’s president says the Public Works Department’s motto should be `we do not serve; we sleep’, report Marion Edmunds and Mungo Soggot
THE Judge President of South Africa’s new Labour Court, Judge John Myburgh, has slammed the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) and has savaged the government for ineptitude in implementing the new Labour Relations Act.
Accusing the JSC of treating a candidate for the bench like a “skelm” and ridiculing the Public Works Department – whose motto, he said, should be “we do not serve; we sleep” – the judge said the public service had failed the new Labour Court in every respect.
Addressing labour lawyers in Cape Town this week, Myburgh described his struggle to find a suitable venue for the seat of the Labour Court in Johannesburg as “extremely painful” and said between July and November nothing had been done to find a venue in Durban. A building had been found in Cape Town, but construction had come to a halt in early August for lack of a building contract between the builders and the government.
“I have accused the Public Works Department of gross incompetence … It’s an open question as to whether they are incompetent or are being subversive,” he said.
Myburgh said pamphlets explaining the workings of the new Labour Court which had been given to the government printers were not yet ready. Instead, Myburgh offered labour lawyers a photostat which he was distributing personally on an information tour around the country.
Myburgh’s other complaints included a gripe that the government had taken 10 weeks to translate the rules of the court into Afrikaans. “We thought the minister of justice had heard a fanfare when we had them ready on July 23. He didn’t and it has taken until October 14 to have them published.”
Myburgh also criticised the Labour Relations Act for making it so difficult to find suitable judges for the Labour Court and the Labour Appeal Court. Disputes between the National Economic, Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) and the JSC, he said, had delayed appointments by 10 weeks.
“So it was not a disaster, but it was potentially a disaster … the Act could not be implemented for 10 weeks, the candidates had to wait 10 weeks without knowing if they were to change their careers,” he said.
There appears to be no love lost between Myburgh and the JSC. He accused it of having ridden roughshod over Nedlac nominations for Labour Court judges and of being too adversarial in its approach to candidates.
“In one interview, the JSC interviewed a candidate as if he were a skelm and reduced him to tears. This was another problem. We are trying to meet with the new chief justice to discuss a modus vivendi for the JSC,” he said.
The new Labour Court will serve alongside the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), the lynchpin of the new Act which comes into effect on November 11. The CCMA, which will administer the mediation and arbitration of labour disputes, will be the first port of call for opposing parties, with the Labour Court there to serve opponents whose disputes cannot be solved through conciliation.
The CCMA, which will be headed by top mediator Charles Nupen, has also had some teething problems including a budget cut, but has had more luck setting up an infrastructure than the Labour Court.