22 March 2007
The Labour Ministry has expressed dismay at Tuesday's march on its
Johannesburg offices by private security guards who made several demands
against Minister Membathisi Mdladlana over agreements they had signed with
employers last year.
In a memorandum handed to officials for the Minister's attention, South
African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) members demanded that the
Minister intervene and formulate policies that would ensure compliance with
regulations that the two parties had agreed on to end the three-month
strike.
They said these had resulted in loopholes which employers were exploiting to
avoid implementing the agreements. Minister Mdladlana is currently in
Switzerland where he is attending an International Labour Organisation (ILO)
summit. Labour Spokesperson Zolisa Sigabi said all the issues that both the
workers and employers had agreed to and signed to end the dispute were then
included in the sectoral determination for the private security guards
sector.
"In fact Minister Mdladlana initiated a further investigation to allow these
matters to be debated by the Employment Conditions Commission in order for the
agreements to be included in the sectoral determination." He has always done so
with other sectors over the past few years, but this does not necessarily make
him a participant in negotiations," she said. The law authorising the Minister
to set minimum wages and employment conditions were subject to the provisions
of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA).
Sectoral determinations by definition as well as by the powers vested in the
Minister of Labour were about minimum standards and minimum wages, not about
best practices. "The sectoral determination therefore does not purport to
establish best practices or 'decent or reasonable wages,'" she said.
This also applied to private security sector employers to pay the minimum
rates which Satawu members had bargained for. "Having already established a
minimum standard, it can therefore not be expected that the Minister would
improve on what has been bargained for in the sector."
Regarding Satawu's claims that guards do not have access to credit because
of the fluctuating nature of their wages, Sigabi said the union was
conveniently forgetting that the sectoral determination had changed their
payment from an hourly to a monthly rate precisely to address the matter.
She reminded the union that their sector was one of those that had received
the highest degree of Ministerial interventions, including the highest number
of sectoral determination amendments, Commission for Conciliation, Mediation
and Arbitration (CCMA) interventions and the establishment of a provident
fund.
Enquiries:
Zolisa Sigabi
Cell: 082 906 3878
Issued by: Department of Labour
22 March 2007
