OWN CORRESPONDENT, | Friday 4.00pm.
THE Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration has not brought about a reduction in labour disputes, nor is it operating at optimum efficiency, CCMA senior commissioner Sarah Christie said on Friday.
Christie told a South African Labour Law Society conference in Stellenbosch that the CCMA’s success is frequently measured by the number of disputes it resolves, but added that this is not an effective way of gauging its success.
A better way in which to indicate whether the CCMA is reaching its goals will be to measure the decline in the number of disputes declared, or to measure an increase in the gross domestic product, she said.
She also warned that there is a danger of the CCMA concentrating solely on cases involving individual dismissals, thereby neglecting other areas under its jurisdiction. At present, individual dismissals make up 79% of the commission’s caseload. she said.
Christie identified problems created by the CCMA’s wide variety of functions, as well as the informal way it operates, as: administration errors, anomalies in the way the body’s budget is allocated and confusion over the jurisdiction of the CCMa, the labour department and the Labour Court.