South Africa has in the recent past seen employees embarking in strike action, even in sectors designated as essential services. The impact adversely affected inter alia economic growth, investor confidence, international credit ratings and the high rate of unemployment. The Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 from its inception on 11 November 1996, and as amended, in 2002 and in 2015, has brought about some minor changes to the model aimed at regulating essential services, maintenance services and minimum services agreements. This research is aimed at investigating; whether essential services, maintenance services and minimum services agreements are designed to unjustifiably limit the right to strike or not. The Constitution1 and the Labour Relations Act, 19952 encourages parties in employment relationship to engage in collective bargaining. Mechanisms such as a no duty to bargain envisaged within the current LRA regulatory framework, appears to be undermining the significance of ensuring that parties engaged within services designated as essential and maintenance services exercise their fundamental right to strike and to bargain collectively. The Essential Services Committee when dispensing with its statutory functions may be unjustifiably limiting the right to strike for employees engaged in essential and maintenance services. Some employers may be to some degree reluctant to trigger maintenance services provisions as the LRA appears to be adopting a voluntarism principle when regulating collective bargaining, as the Act is encouraging employers to deal with the provision of maintenance services within collective agreements. An introduction of a judiciable enforceable duty to bargain collectively in services designated as essential and maintenance services may compel employers to conclude minimum services agreements. The extremely low number of services designated as maintenance services is a worrying reality and the solution is urgently required.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:29637 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Zama, Ntokozo Patrick |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Law |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, LLM |
| Format | v, 97 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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