Labour unions are inclined to exaggerate any small victory they achieve on the factory floor or the courts. But the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) can be excused its gloating after it won its battle in the Constitutional Court against labour brokers. So significant and far-reaching is the judgment that it has been hailed as the death knell for labour brokers.
Labour brokering, a form of outsourcing that’s common practice in South Africa, has long been a source of chagrin among unions and workers. Reduced to its simplest form, a labour broker (or Temporary Employment Service) is defined as a “person or company that provides labourers to client companies on a temporary basis. The workers work at the client company site, but are the employees of the labour broker, not the client”.
As casual workers, such employees receive much lower salaries than permanent employees, do not get fringe benefits such as medical aid cover, do not belong to pension/provident funds, and have lower job security than permanent employees.
Unions argue that generally the main contract is agreed to between the broker and the so-called “client” enterprise - and the workers, the true suppliers of labour, are excluded from this process.
On March 7, 2012, thousands of workers staged a march against the practice of labour brokers, demanding that the government put an end to it. The Minister of Labour Affairs Mildred Oliphant brushed these demands aside and said labour brokering “is here to stay”.
The case in which the Concourt ruled yesterday concerned the interpretation of a section of the Labour Relations Act and the determination of when a worker was in a sole employment or dual employment relationship with the labour broker.
Yesterday’s ruling means that casual workers who earn R205 000 a year and less, who are employed by labour brokers, are eligible to become permanent employees of the main employer after three months.
We applaud the Concourt for helping protect the rights of all workers and eliminate a source of labour disputes.