Johannesburg | Wednesday
THE proposed amendment to the Labour Relations Act (LRA) that will allow legal strikes to impede retrenchments will further ”bedevil” government’s privatisation plans, industrial relations and human resources company NMG-Levy said on Wednesday.
”Privatisation is currently on hold because the timing is inopportune on the cusp of a downturn,” the company said in a statement.
”Should markets strengthen, privatisation will recommence – by which stage an amended LRA could well make it legal to strike to stop the implementation of anything but voluntary redundancies.”
NMG-Levy senior labour consultant Brian Allen said most state assets were over-staffed, which made cutbacks inevitable in the search for profitability.
”The irony is that government will be giving the labour unions a stick to beat it with,” Allen said.
”They (prospective investors) may well hold back and leave it to government to carry through at least the first phase of any rationalisation process.
”If labour resistance to job losses then set in, government would face a huge test of political will while new strains would be introduced to its partnership with the union movement.
”Government is about to hand itself a can of worms.”
Currently, strikers cannot prevent employers from embarking on retrenchments as long as full consultations have been carried out.
According to the NMG-Levy, the proposed amendment to section 189 of the LRA obliges parties to ”engage in a meaningful, joint consensus-seeking process”.
A commissioner appointed by the Commission for Conciliation for Mediation and Arbitration can facilitate discussions but if negotiations remain deadlocked for 60 days, the workers have the right to strike.
”By introducing the principle of the legal retrenchment strike, the right of workers to fight for their jobs is acknowledged, but the right of an employer to logically and profitably structure his own business may be infringed,” Allen said.
”The net effect may be to put a brake on new investment, either from outside the country or from within.” – Sapa