Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana has called on trade unions representing striking security guards and employers to resume negotiations, the government news agency, BuaNews, reported on Tuesday.
Briefing the media after an interaction with staff of the Compensation Fund in Pretoria, Mdladlana said he had been asked to intervene in the impasse over wages and working conditions in the security industry. But, he said, according to the law he could not do so.
He was quoted as saying that “the law is clear, the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) must arbitrate, conciliate, and parties must be willing to come to the table. Why some people are asking the minister of labour to engage in criminal activity and violate the law, I do not understand.”
He said under normal circumstances, he would only intervene once the parties involved in the strike had taken the matter to the CCMA.
“What we would have done normally, we would sit down for an agreement between the two parties, that agreement forms the basis for us to do investigations … we must conduct public hearings in the sector, collect information, and take it to the Employment Conditions Commission, who will also, if they want to, conduct more public hearings, formulate a report and advise the minister of labour. It’s only at that point that the minister can get involved.”
Mdladlana said he had called the “most-experienced commissioners” to help the parties go back to the negotiating table, but the commissioners were waiting for a go ahead from the parties concerned. “We have been part of this process since it started, whoever is talking about intervention must wake up. The involvement of the CCMA is the intervention of the minister.”
The minister also voiced his disappointment at the “slow pace” with which the Compensation Fund paid claims. It appeared that the filing of claims by the fund was done manually and this caused blockages and problems.
The Compensation Fund is a public entity under the Department of Labour and is responsible for administering funds that serve as compensation for workers who are disabled due to occupational injuries or disease.
Mdladlana criticised the contracted IT company, saying that its system was too slow.
“This is failed private-public partnership. We contracted them because we were told that the private sector performs better than government,” he said. He also explained that the funds’ employees were contracted via an agency and that government was in a process of transferring them to the Department of Labour. — I-Net Bridge