This research hypothesises a statistical positive significant correlation between job satisfaction and absenteeism among the shop floor workers of a motor manufacturing plant in the impoverished province of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. According to the literature review, two schools of thought exist that argue on the nature of the relationship. One believes that absence from work is in some way a natural consequence of job dissatisfaction, i.e. arguing for a job satisfaction-absenteeism relationship. The second one argues for a no relationship, arguing that absence is a result of habitual behaviour and or behaviours influenced by socioeconomic factors such as poverty that affect the employees' ability and pressure to attend work. A sample of 150 workers was randomly selected from the 2500 shop floor workers. The Job Descriptive Index (lDI) questionnaires were used to measure the satisfaction index of the workers. The absence statistics for the sample workers were gathered from the organisation's Human Resources department and statistical tests for correlation and regression were conducted on the two variables - lDI and absence data. Contrary to the expectations of the study, the results showed that overall job satisfaction and absenteeism were not correlated. It concluded that the job dissatisfaction theory of absenteeism is empirically unsupportable and alternative conceptualisations of absence contributors and potentially fruitful research strategies are discussed.

This study sought to explore and explain the impact of labour laws on small firms, focusing on employer perceptions of the Labour Relations Act of 1995 and the Basic Conditions of Employment Act of 1997 in three towns of the Eastern Cape. It is important to focus on this impact of labour laws on these firms because of the high unemployment that faces the country. In this regard, it must be emphasised, firstly, that small firms are central to job creation; therefore, they contribute to a reduction in the unemployment rate; hence, the strategies created by the government to reduce any burdens (including regulatory burdens) on small firms. It is therefore important to study the impact of labour law on small businesses in order to assess the regulatory burden on small firms. The theoretical framework which underpins this study on the impact of labour law on small firms arises from the neo-corporatist critique of neo-liberalism. The two frameworks maintain the extent to which the government should intervene in the industrial relations system. Liberalism maintains that there should be a minimum role of the government, which involves only the facilitation of a framework for negotiations between employers and employees. Corporatism, however, maintains a social democratic approach, and holds that there should be an active role of the government in the industrial relations system with business, labour and the state working co-operatively (Klerck, 2009). This theoretical framework therefore shapes the extent to which employers perceive labour laws or state’s regulatory role impacts small businesses. The data was collected through the qualitative inquiry; using face-to-face, semi-structured interviews. The findings in this study included negative employer perceptions of labour laws. More specifically, many of the employers that were interviewed claimed that labour laws were burdensome on their businesses. They claimed that labour laws imposed financial and administrative costs to their firms, negatively affected the employer-employee relationships in these firms as well as the employing decisions of the employers. As a result, the employers saw labour laws as undermining flexibility and imposing unfair rigidities on small firms. Furthermore, employers perceived South African labour laws as not addressing the unique iii circumstances of small firms. They maintained that labour laws treated small firms similarly to large firms. Even though the employers held these perceptions of labour laws, it was evident that these subjective perceptions did not reflect the objective impact of labour laws on small firms. This was firstly related to the fact that many of the employers that were interviewed had negative views of labour laws but these views were not substantiated by particular events in their firms. Secondly, it was revealed that the employers’ perceptions of labour laws were based on their misconception or misunderstanding of labour law. Thirdly, it was revealed in this thesis that small firms were not affected in the same way to big firms by labour regulation. This was related to the fact that many of the small firms’ employers that were interviewed tended to be less concerned by regulation. Specifically, although many employers that were interviewed claimed that labour laws were burdensome on their firms it was evident that regulation was avoided because of the informality that characterised these firms. Consequently informality mediated the impact of labour laws on these firms, and labour laws imposed less ‘costs’ on these firms. However, it cannot be argued that small firms are isolated from the sphere of labour laws. Rather, although these firms were governed by regulation it was found that the extent to which employers complied with regulation depended on the extent to which organisational practice already reflected similarity with the legislative objective. / Acrobat PDFMaker 10.1 for Word / Adobe PDF Library 10.0

Section 213 of the Labour Relations Act defines ’strike’ as the partial or complete concerted refusal to work, or the retardation or obstruction of work, by persons who are or have been employed by the same employer or by different employers, for the purpose of remedying a grievance or resolving a dispute in respect of any matter of mutual interest between the employer and employee, and any reference to “work” this definition includes overtime work, whether it is voluntary or compulsory. According to Mcllroy: “As long as our society is divided between those who own and control the means of production and those who only have the ability to work, strikes will be inevitable because they are the ultimate means workers have of protecting themselves.” 1 The Constitutional Court justified the exclusion of a constitutional right to lock out and the inclusion of a constitutional right to strike by indicating that the right to strike is not equivalent to a right to lock out and is essential for workplace democracy. 2 The right to strike is essential to bolster collective bargaining and thereby to give employees the power to bargain effectively with employers. The employers on the According to the Constitutional Court employers enjoy greater social and economic power compared to individual workers and may exercise a wide range of power against workers through a range of weapons, such as dismissal, the employment of alternative or replacement labour, the unilateral implementation of new terms and conditions of employment, and the exclusion of workers from the workplace. To combat this and have a say in the workplace, the Constitutional Court held that “employees need to act in concert to provide them collectively with sufficient power to bargain effectively with employers and exercise collective power primarily through the mechanism of strike action”. The importance of the right to strike in creating workplace democracy is also reflected in a number of Labour Court and Labour Appeal Court judgments. other hand have economic strength that is used to bargain effectively. That is why the strike enjoys constitutional protection, whereas the lock-out does not. / Abstract

This research adds on to Chaulk & Brown (2008) research on the assessment of employees’ reaction towards management and the union in the pre-strike and post-strike period. Research problem: The study raised two aspects that form part of the statement of the problem. Firstly, strike action has been a major aspect describing the South African industrial relations climate. The high level of strike action prompts the question; “Are South Africans World Class Strikers?” (Anstey, 2006). Secondly, the analysis of strike action has focussed more on the economic and power testing impact analysis rather than psychological and affective impact analysis of the strike such as establishing the impact of the strike on job satisfaction, work climate satisfaction, organisational commitment, management satisfaction, and union commitment. Research objectives: To address the research problem, research objectives, research questions and hypotheses were established. The main objective of the study was to examine the causes, processes and the impact of the strike, thereby making a contribution to both theory and practice. Whereas the contribution to theory took a form of building on to the research carried out by Chaulk & Brown (2008), and exploring through the process analysis on how behaviour during the conflict impacts on the ongoing relationships within the organisation, the contribution to practice took a form of highlighting to management and unions the impact of the strike on employees so that necessary interventions to prevent the negative impact of the strike would be created. Research questions: Six research questions were established and these were; what were the causes of the strike; how did the strike unfold; what were the substantive outcomes of the strike; what were the procedural outcomes of the strike; what were the climate outcomes of the strike; is there a relationship between the demographic factors and the affective outcomes of the strike? Research hypotheses; Five research hypotheses were established for the research. These hypotheses were aimed at establishing the impact of the strike on the affective outcomes of the strike. These were; there was a significant change in the level of organizational commitment after the strike; there was a significant change in the level of job satisfaction after the strike; there was a significant change in the level of work climate satisfaction after the strike; there was a significant change in the level of management satisfaction after the strike; and there is was significant change in the level of union commitment after the strike. Research design and methodology: Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect data. Qualitatively, interviews, media reports and the Municipality records were being used to collect data on the causes, processes and outcomes of the strike. Quantitatively a survey questionnaire was used to collect data. Data was collected from 105 Traffic Officers who had recently been on strike in the NMBM. Measures of organisational and union commitment, employee job satisfaction, and work climate satisfaction were assessed using the Chaulk & Brown (2008) questionnaire. A paired sample t-test, ANOVA test, and Scheffe test and Cronbach’s alpha, were some of the quantitative methods used in data analysis. Henning’s approach was used to analyze qualitative data. Major findings: The results from the questionnaire revealed that job satisfaction, work climate satisfaction and management satisfaction significantly changed in the post-strike period. In addition, impact of demographic factors on affective factors was evident for participation in the strike and the level of union commitment; age and job satisfaction; occupational level and job satisfaction; and service length and union commitment.

M.A. / Literature studies have shown that the organization, as well as the individual in the organization is directly affected by violence. The reasons and characteristics of violence have an emotional impact on the employee, and requires of him to work through the impact of incidents in his own time. The result of this process is delayed psychological growth, less creativity which eventually has an impact on productivity. Workmotivation is the force behind reaching goals individually as well as for the organization. External factors which includes violence, have an influence on the employee's ability to feel satisfied in his work situation. The goal of this research study is to determine if Eskom employees that were exposed to incidents of violence have a workmotivation profile that can be identified. A sample was selected with available statistics in Eskom, as well as the snowball method. The sample included 220 respondents. The respondents completed a unstuctured questionnaire, where they had to identify incidents in their work situation that made them feel good / happy, and incidents that made them feel bad / unhappy. The questionnaire was developed by Frederick Herzberg (1968) as part of his motivation hygiene theory where factors of worksatisfaction and rkdissatisfaction were identified. The results were computerized, and quantified by means of descriptive statistics. A workmotivation profile was constructed from the data. The study confirmed that a workmotivation profile of employees that have been subjected to incidents of violence can be identified. Determinants of worksatisfaction and work dissatisfaction were identified as responsibility, supervision, content of work, recognition, promotion, circumstances at work, personal circumstances and violence. On this profile violence received the highest percentage as a determinant of workdissatisfaction.

Cde President, Willie Madisha, Cde Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary and all COSATU national office-bearers, leadership of COSATU affiliates, leadership of the ANC present, Cde Jeremy Cronin and the SACP delegation, local and international guests, cde delegates. As the SACP we are deeply honoured by the invitation to come and address your congress. This occasion might go down in history as one of the most important congresses in the history of this Federation, this, the 8th Congress of the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

This dissertation consists of three empirical research studies that broadly pertain to the economics of collective bargaining, or the process by which employees act through labor unions to negotiate with employers over compensation, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and of labor market power, which refers to the ability of economic actors to set wages and employment at levels different from those that would obtain under a theoretical ideal of perfect competition, wherein both workers and firms are atomized agents with no unilateral ability to influence a market equilibrium. The first chapter, entitled "The Effects of Union Membership on Inequality and Well-Being in Retirement," uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and an empirical design based on comparisons of older workers who switch into or out of union employment in the years before retirement with otherwise similar peers to study the effect of union membership on various outcomes in old age, including pension income and income from other sources, wealth, consumption, time use, mortality, morbidity, and inequality. Our notable findings include a pension income premium for workers who retire as union members of approximately 10-20%, similar to estimates of the union wage premium; evidence of larger premia for retirees at lower quantiles of the pension income distribution, which mirrors existing research on how unions exert a compressive effect on the distribution of wages for current workers; and a reduction in the annual mortality rate for union retirees of around 1.25%, comparable to estimates of the mortality differential between the lowest- and highest-income individuals in the same age category. We further attempt to distill the multidimensional effects of union membership in retirement into a single measure of impact on well-being using the concept of "consumption-equivalent welfare," and estimate that the subsequent lifetime welfare of those who retire from nonunion jobs is on the order of 50-60% that of those who retire from union jobs, depending on the precise assumptions and methodology employed. The second chapter, coauthored with Leonard Goff, is entitled "Monopsony in Minnesota: Rent-Sharing and Labor Supply Consequences of a Nursing Home Reimbursement Reform." Models of static labor market monopsony predict that rent-sharing, or pass-through from firm productivity or marginal revenue shocks into workers' wages, is one consequence of labor markets being less than perfectly competitive. In this study we consider a 2016 reform to the state of Minnesota's Medicaid reimbursement scheme for residents of nursing homes that introduced so-called value-based reimbursement, and make use of data on facilities' wages, employee separations, and revenue from various sources to simultaneously estimate both rent-sharing and firm-level labor supply elasticities. In our most-preferred two-stage least squares specifications we find rent-sharing elasticities on the order of 0.10-0.25, suggesting that pass-through is substantially greater than indicated by naive OLS estimates of the same, and we confirm these results through an alternative methodology based on "seemingly unrelated regressions." With the same approach we also obtain an estimate of the average labor supply elasticity facing nursing homes of around 5, corresponding to an optimal wage markdown below marginal revenue product of roughly 15%. Furthermore, subgroup analyses by occupation, union status, and local labor market concentration show little evidence of an effect of collective bargaining on rent-sharing but more convincing indications that rent-sharing is greater in occupations or commuting zones that are characterized by lower labor supply elasticity - a fact that we show can be rationalized with a model of monopsony in which firms have isoelastic production functions. The third and final chapter, coauthored with Brendan Moore and Suresh Naidu, is entitled "Right-to-Work and Union Decline in the United States: Evidence from a Novel Dataset on County-Level Union Membership." Labor union membership and union density in the United States have fallen substantially in recent decades, in particular in the private sector. The causal contribution of state-level "right-to-work" (RTW) laws, which prohibit collective bargaining agreements from requiring union membership as a condition of employment, has been heavily debated. However, research on the role of RTW in accounting for these trends has been stymied by a paucity of data on union membership at a fine geographic level. Using a LASSO selection model and data from several different administrative and survey-based sources, we construct a novel dataset on county-level membership and density and use it to reexamine the consequences of RTW. We show that RTW has a highly significant negative effect in this regard, and we establish that the impact of these laws is felt most strongly in those counties that are the most highly-unionized at the start of our sample period. On average we find that density is reduced by about an additional 0.4 percentage points for every one percentage point increase in its initial value in 1991. However, counties at or below the median initial density see little to no change, while density declines by about 7 percentage points following the passage of RTW for those in the uppermost decile. We also present evidence from an event-study analysis which shows that the effect of RTW grows over time, with the full impact only being felt about a decade after enactment. Taken both individually and collectively, these three essays serve to advance an understanding of the determinants and consequences of union membership and monopsony power. In addition to making original contributions to the fields of applied labor economics and labor studies, it is our hope that they also offer frameworks upon which future research in these areas can build.

This study investigates the role social information and personal dispositions play in the development of attitudes of unionized employees towards employee involvement programs. A theoretical model was developed in order to understand how social information and dispositions form union member attitudes towards employee involvement programs. This was designed from models of employee involvement and attitude formation. Data were collected from employees at electrical power generation facilities. Measures of organizational and union commitment, locus of control, participativeness, social information provided by the company, social information provided by the union, and employee involvement attitudes were gathered through a survey distributed at the facilities. General affect and satisfaction towards four types of employee involvement programs union members are most likely to encounter were measured. Specific hypotheses were developed in order to test and analyze parts of the theoretical model. While the results were at times contrary to the hypothesized relationships within the model, the data fit with the theorized model well enough to provide support for it. This model effectively demonstrated how employee involvement attitudes are formed from such data, and the relationships between the variables measured. / Ph. D.

University of the Witwatersrand Discipline of Psychology MASTERS RESEARCH REPORT / This study conducted a thematic content analysis qualitative methods approach to explore the perceptions of the “Impact of the 2012 Marikana labour unrest on labour and industrial relations in South Africa”. Perceptions of industrial relations stakeholder role efficacy; causes and consequences of labour-management conflict, intra-union conflict and inter-union conflict are discussed. Economic, political, sociological factors as well as the influence of group dynamics are discussed to frame the impact of the 2012 Marikana incident on labour and industrial relations in South Africa.

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