Extension of bargaining council agreements : international norms and the situation in South Africa

Section 23(5) of the Constitution protects this right to engage in collective bargaining and the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 (LRA) promotes collective bargaining, in particular at sectoral level. As part of the promotion of sector level bargaining, parties in a Bargaining Council rnay request the Minister of Labour to extend their collective agreements to bind non-parties. Sections 32(2) and (3) of the LRA provide for automatic extension where the parties represent a majority of the industry, whereas when there is less than majority representativeness by the parties to the Bargaining Council, then section 32(5) of the LRA permits the Minister of Labour to exercise her discretion whether to grant the extension request or not. The Free Market Foundation ("FMF") recently instituted an attack against elements of the extension of bargaining council agreements. They initially that section 32(5) of the LRA is unconstitutional and infringes the majoritariansm principle, however this part of their argument was later abandoned. In my dissertation, I explore the FMF's abandoned argument to assess whether it has any merit. In order to do this, I also consider the international and foreign positions regarding the extension of collective agreements to nonparties.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Pretoria

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Van Eck, B.P.S.

• UCTD
• bargaining council
• labour relations act
• Collective bargaining

Statement dc:rights

• © 2016 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

S2016

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/56973