Regular strike action has become a central characteristic of the South African industrial relations system. Whilst in the 1950s strikes were mostly isolated outbursts of relatively short duration, strikes in the 1980s were challenges of unprecedented duration and intensity. It is argued that despite this dramatic change, reflecting a series of discontinuities in both the political and economic arenas, strike action in South Africa does follow distinct patterns, and can be ascribed to a combination of identifiable causes. Principal causal factors include wage aspirations, past experiences and the subjective interpretation thereof, and the role of the union movement. Contingent factors include the prevailing political climate, industrial relations legislation, the amount of information opposing sides possess of their adversaries' intentions as well as spatial issues, such as the internal dynamics of individual communities. Partially as a result of South Africa's political transformation, the late 1980s and early 1990s saw further changes in the industrial relations environment. Reflecting these developments, it is argued that a new type of trade unionism has developed, "coterminous unionism" . This will have far-reaching implications for the nature of industrial conflict. However, it falls fully within the theoretical parameters outlined in this thesis. Despite significant developments in social theory in the 1980s and 1990s, there have been few attempts accordingly to update theories of strike action. One of the objectives of this thesis has been to attempt such an update. It is hoped that the constructs developed will shed light on a widely prevalent form of social conflict, assist in the analysis of future outbreaks, and enable the identification of those situations where a high propensity to engage in strike action may exist.

The construction industry is one of the most dangerous industries in the world, with many workplace fatalities every day. The existence of legislation that governs Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is an intervention to ensure that all governments, employers and employees play their part in establishing and implementing policies that will help secure healthy and safe working environments. The study is qualitative and with the help of an interview guide, semistructured interviews were used to collect the data. The respondents were selected using purposive and snowball sampling methods. Ten managers from ten (five small, five large) construction firms, two employees from each firm, and the OHS inspector from the Department of Labour in Grahamstown were interviewed. Having explored management’s practices, communication methods, training and distribution of information, employee representation and participation, and industrial relations, several conclusions were reached. During the study it was found that there are a number of obstacles that are hampering effective OHS in the construction industry. Some of these include; management’s lack of commitment to a participatory approach in OHS decision-making, limited resources to invest adequately in OHS, and the lack of sufficient trade union involvement. In addition, we know very little about OHS in the construction industry, and the mere existence of OHS legislation does not help reduce the risks associated with construction work, especially when there is a shortage of skilled personnel to enforce the legislation and regulations.

From the Introduction, p. 1-2. The main purposes of this study are to examine the methods by which one particular aspect of industrial behaviour, namely that of the worker's final withdrawal from the work situation, can be measured; to offer a more refined technique for the measurement of such withdrawals, and thirdly to attempt to relate this measurable phenomenon of withdrawal, commonly known as Labour Turnover, to the less easily measurable phenomenon of the integration of the individual worker into his working group. Labour Turnover - or the loss, over time, of employees from an employing organisation - is normally regarded as a province of study appropriate to the field of Industrial Psychology, and to its related applied field of Personnel Management. To a large extent, however, (as will be illustrated in Chapter II of this work) the results of such studies have proved inconclusive, and contradictory, and there is little evidence of progress towards a comprehensive understanding of the subject. This is undoubtedly due to the fragmentary nature of most studies in this field. These have generally been limited to the narrow confines of one particular aspect of the phenomenon, and consequently it has not been viewed against a sufficiently broad background.

This treatise describes the difficulty of changing conditions of service following transfers in terms of Section 197 of the Labour Relations Act, 66 of 1995. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996, provides that ambulance services are a Provincial Legislative competence. The City of Cape Town had for many years provided ambulance services on an agency basis to the Department of Health of the Provincial Administration of the Western Cape. The impact of the constitutional provision is that those employers and employees who are performing ambulance services are not entitled anymore to perform such function. The Department of Health must take control over the ambulance services and the employees of the City of Cape Town could be transferred. The challenges facing both employers (old and new) and the trade unions to secure a transfer of the employees from the City of Cape Town to the Department of Health in terms of section 197 of the Labour Relations Act will be highlighted. It is within the context of ensuring protection of jobs whilst simultaneously effect a transfer of contracts of employment that the Labour Relations Act expressly gives various options to the parties involves in a transfer. Of the options include: • A transfer in terms of section 197(2) of the LRA where the service could be transferred from the old employer to the new employer as a going concern. This could happen without the consent of the affected employees or trade unions and collective agreements must be taken over as well, or • The new employer complies with its obligations if the transfer takes place on terms and conditions that are on the whole not less favourable to the employees what they have received by the old employer. In terms of this provision the overall package of conditions of service that was offered should not be less in comparison with that of the old employer. • The parties also have the option to negotiate a transfer agreement that could regulate the conditions of service. The focus is on the description of the conditions of service of both employers and the difficulty to persuade the trade unions to accept the Department’s conditions of service. Part of the difficulty is that the Department must obtain its mandate from the Department of the Public Service and Administration, who is also responsible for the determining of the conditions of service in the Public Service. One of the challenges is that the Department of Health cannot accommodate collective agreements of entities outside the Public Service. The City of Cape Town’s conditions of service is in the form of a collective agreement and the Labour Relations Act is very specific with the various options. These options will be discussed an analised. In conclusion recommendations are made in regard to effect a transfer of conditions of employment in terms of the Labour Relations Act to enable the Department of Health to meet its constitutional obligation.

This treatise will therefore critically discuss fairness requirements in dismissal law within the context of the education sector from: i) the perspective of a dismissed employee; and ii) the perspective of an employer who wishes to dismiss employees fairly; and iii) the perspective of a deemed dismissal. It will be proper to flow this discussion from the premises of what should be considered procedural and substantive fairness in dismissals.

The 1996 Constitution provides workers with the right to form and join trade unions and to participate in the activities and programmes of those trade unions. The organizational and associated rights contained in sections 23(2)-(4) of the Constitution of Republic of South Africa, form the bedrock of a labour-relations system characterized by voluntarist collective bargaining. The constitutional protection that the above section gives to these organisational rights shields the trade unions and employer organisations from legislative and executive interference in their affairs and in turn, inhibits victimisation of and interference in trade unions by employers. One of the expressly stated purposes of the Labour Relations Act of 1995 (hereinafter referred to as the “LRA”) is to promote collective bargaining and to provide a framework within which employers, employers’ organisations, trade unions and employees can bargain collectively to determine wages, terms and conditions of employment, other matters of mutual interest and to formulate industrial policy. Notwithstanding the above purpose, the Act does not compel collective bargaining, with the result that the courts have no role in determining, for example, whether an employer should bargain collectively with a trade, what they should bargain about, at what level they should bargain or how parties to a negotiation should conduct themselves. Despite this, by extending and bolstering the right to strike, the LRA has effectively empowered trade unions to have recourse to the strike as an integral aspect of the collective bargaining process. The LRA provides a framework that is conducive to collective bargaining and thus providing for the establishment of bargaining councils. The purpose of this treatise is to examine the role played by the Education Labour Relations Council (hereinafter referred to as the “ELRC”) as one of the sectoral bargaining councils in the Public Service, in collective bargaining. In order to place this discussion in context, it is valuable to know the history of industrial relations and collective bargaining in South Africa.

The highly competitive environment in which companies functions prompts the need to review their operations which may include reconsideration of the manning levels, and or changing terms and conditions of employment in order to be able to survive and prosper economically. The difficulty arises when the employers have to respond to the challenges. By law the employers are legally prohibited from unilaterally effecting the changes to the terms and conditions of employment. Furthermore, changing terms and conditions of employment is dealt with through collective bargaining and as such, the dismissal is outlawed as a legitimate instrument to coerce the employees to concede to the proposals. So the employers have to obtain an agreement or consent with the affected employees. In terms of the 1956 LRA the employer could justifiably terminate the contract of employment within the context of collective bargaining. For the employer to avoid offending the lock out provisions in terms of the 1956 LRA, the lock-out dismissal had to be effected in order to achieve a specific purpose, and it had to be conditional. Unlike its predecessor, the 1995 Labour Relations Act introduced section 187(1)(c) which renders the so-called lock-out dismissal by an employer, within the context of collective bargaining, automatically unfair. Section 187(1)(c) categorises a dismissal as automatically unfair, if the reason is a refusal by employees to accept a demand in respect of any matter of mutual interest between them and their employer. The employers are however permitted in terms of the 1995 LRA, to dismiss the employees based on operational grounds, as long as the requisite process has been adhered to. The employers need to restructure their operations in order to ensure that terms and conditions of employment are responsive to operational needs. Where the employees’ terms and conditions of employment are not in line with the company operational requirements, the need to terminate the employment contracts of the employees may arise. The employers are within their right to terminate the service of the employees who refuse to accept changes to their conditions of service based on the employers’ operational requirements. The court in Schoeman v Samsung Electronics confirmed that employer’s right to run its business in a successful manner, which includes affecting changes to the existing terms and conditions of employment to be aligned with the market demand. The dismissal is outlawed as a mechanism to coerce the employees to acceptance the employer’s demand relating to matters of mutual interest. At the same time, the employers are within their rights terminate the service of the employees who refuse to accept changes to their conditions of service based on the employers operational requirements. There is a clear tension between sections 187(1) (c), 188(1) (ii) and 189 of LRA. When the employers seek to review the terms and conditions of employment, the tension between these sections becomes more common, as it involves the matters of mutual interest which are dealt with through the collective bargaining arena and the dispute of right through arbitration. In Fry’s Metals v Numsa the court rejected the notion that there is tension between section 187(1) (c) and section 188(1) (a) (ii) of the LRA. Instead the court was of the view that, there is a historical context to section 187(1) (c) which is the now repealed 1956 Labour Relations Act. The 1956 LRA included in its definition of a lock-out the termination by the employer. Secondly, the court interpreted section 187(1)(C) to only give protection to employees who are dismissed in order to compel them to accept a demand on a matter of mutual interest, and only where the dismissal was of a temporary nature. The court interpretation in Fry’s metals implied that, section 187(1)(c) will only come to the defence of employees if they are dismissed for the purpose compelling them to accept a demand on a matter of mutual interest, and if the dismissal was of a temporary nature. Where a permanent dismissal is effected because employees would not accept its demands, section 187(1) (c) could not come to the employees’ protection. Considering that the lock out provided for in terms of the 1995 LRA is not a preferred option by most of the employers, they will rather resort to use the loophole created by the narrow interpretation of section 187(1)(c) to circumvent having to secure consensus from the affected employees and rather dismissed them based on operational requirements. This study seeks to deal with the questions relating to the relationship between collective bargaining related dismissals in particular the automatically unfair dismissal in terms of section 187(1) (c) and business restructuring related dismissal. As such the relationship between sections 187(1) (c) and dismissals based on operational requirements will be central to this study.

Ph.D. (Psychology and People Management) / Ineffective communication, inadequate disciplinary measures and little interest in the advancement of black employees are of the greatest problems in the South African manufacturing industry. An investigation was done to determine the perception of different groups working on different levels concerning communication, black advancement in the work situation and discipline. A theoretical framework indicate that vertical communication is essential for stable labour relations in any industry. Employees show a great need to be treated fairly and to obtain democratic decision making power by means of ordered representative systems. The cultural gap, discrimination in education and training, the attitude of both whites and blacks towards one another as well as the attitude concerning integration of work facilities seem to be the most important reasons for black advancement's failure in South Africa. For black advancement to be successful in the work situation, total social, political and industrial integration is necessary.

The rise and development of ‘Coloured’ labour relations and political organisations form the central theme of this study. These two areas of South African contemporary history have received comparatively little attention for a number of reasons. Not the least of these is the controversial issue of whether or not it is justifiable or accurate to treat ‘Coloureds’ as a separate and identifiable group apart from the black majority. The term ‘Coloured’ as used in the South African context refers to those people often described in other societies as of mixed race, mulattos or half-castes. Within this study the term ‘Coloured with a capital C and hereafter without apostrophes is used to avoid confusion with ‘coloured1 meaning black. Black is used in the general sense of all those people not being White. The impact of organized Coloured politics, however, has been greater than their minority status would suggest, especially in the Cape, and in particular in the Western Cape, where most of the people described as Coloured live. When Coloured political mobilization started in the 1890’s, it centered in Cape Town. The founding of the first successful Coloured political movement, the African Political Organization (APO), marked the start of successful black political mobilization on a national scale in South Africa. Other Coloured organisations which emerged after the APO made important contributions to the tactics and ideologies of Black political leaders. Coloured intellectuals in the 1940’s propagated the principle of non-collaboration with segregatory political institutions, implemented through the tactic of the boycott, a strategy employed to good effect by contemporary Black organisations. This study is divided into three main sections. Chapters 1 and 2 trace the origins of the labour history in which past and present day developments in the industrial relations system can be viewed in relation to the political, industrial and economic systems that have evolved within South Africa since the occupation of the Western Cape by the Dutch in 1652. The initial contact between these Europeans and the indigenous inhabitants of the Cape developed a relationship which determined the pattern of interaction between Black and White South Africans the major traces of which have still remained until today. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 deal with the early history of the Coloured people, their industrial and political organisations prior to the watershed year of South African Industrial Relations, 1979, whereafter a more generalised view is adopted in order to trace the broad trends which have emerged with the new labour dispensation and its industrial enfranchisement of the Black worker. The remaining chapters concentrate on Coloured participation within the Industrial and Political arenas, particularly in the Western Cape, and offer substantiation for the postulate of a new political grouping based on socialist principles and having a similar trend in terms of its origins to that of the British Labour Party at its birth at the turn of this century. It is concluded that this grouping would be a natural home for the ‘stateless’ Coloured, and ideologically and politically would offer coherence and structure to the disparate groupings within the United Democratic Front (UDF) and form the most potential, Western Cape based political party ‘in waiting'. / This occasional paper is based on the technical report which received the Finansbank award for 1987

M.Phil. (Labour Law and Employment Relations) / Please refer to full text to view abstract