Setback for centralised collective bargaining extension of agreement

http://www.salabournews.co.za/index.php/press-releases/22199-setback-for-centralised-collective-bargaining-extension-of-agreement.html


BDLive reports that the Labour Court has set aside the 2011-2014 three-year agreement in the metals industry, a serious blow for centralised collective bargaining, but which the National Employers Association of SA (Neasa), having fought a series of legal battles against the Metal and Engineering Industry Bargaining Council (MEIBC) over the past four years, called a "huge victory".  


The court agreed on Thursday that Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant should not have extended an agreement between unions and large employers to Neasa’s 3,000 member companies.  While Neasa is part of the bargaining council, it has refused to sign on to wage increases agreed on in the collective bargaining process, saying its mostly small and medium-sized company members, employing about 80,000 people, cannot afford them.  Neasa said on Thursday that the court found the agreement Oliphant had extended to all employers had never been concluded under the auspices of the bargaining council.  According to Neasa CE Gerhard Papenfus, the court "criticised" the MEIBC and Oliphant for failing to get their "houses in order", and said in the judgment that they had "failed to do so in ways that are both obvious and fundamental".  


The Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of SA (Seifsa), which supports the collective bargaining process and the extension of the wage agreement to all in the industry, declined to comment.  The Department of Labour did not respond to requests for comment.  National Union of Metalworkers of SA general secretary Irvin Jim said that all "conservative employers in the industry still stick to the old apartheid accumulation strategy of seeing black and African workers as not complete human beings who … must be paid starvation wages and … live in sweatshop conditions".  He said the working class should take to the streets next year to demand a national minimum wage so black workers no longer earned "starvation wages".