After a successful marathon of national public briefing sessions on amendment to Labour Relations Act and the Basic Condition of Employment Act throughout the country, another run will take place in Limpopo Province. Interested stakeholders will get a chance to bite at the piece during the session which will be held in Meropa Casino (Polokwane) on Wednesday 02 May 2012 at 10h00 until 13h00.
Amongst other things that will take a centre stage during this briefing are the controversies around labour brokering, greater changes to the Basic Condition of Employment Act, as well as Labour Relations Act and over 35 changes of dispute resolution on Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA).
Speaking during the previous session held in Witbank on 26 April 2012, Thembinkosi Mkalipi, Chief Director Labour Market Policy in the department, said “All abuses in the law, we have built in processes to challenge that. No longer will we allow a labour broker to employ a worker temporarily for more than six months. Also, we will no longer allow workers employed in those circumstances to be discriminated against in terms of pay and benefits. It is time work of similar value is compensated equally.”
The other main purpose of these sessions is to report back and inform the stakeholders about the Labour Relations Amendment Bill, 2012 and the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, 2012.
Mkalipi continued to say that the department had fulfilled part of its mandate, that of submitting the amendments to LRA and BCEA to Cabinet and next step going forward was for the bills to be tabled before Parliament for debate.
He said these public briefings planned by DoL are intended to strictly inform the stakeholders and were not an input gathering session. He said any further public inputs would now depend entirely on Parliamentary process.
“In 2010 after publishing the new bills for amendment, we went on a national public hearings campaign, where we solicited comments from the public and various organisations. So, we feel it is also important that we should go back and report to public what we propose. We want to educate interested stakeholders what these changes mean. Our duty now is to provide clarification,” he said.
Based on an immense turnout on previous engagements with stakeholders throughout the country during the sessions of the same magnitude, the Department was expecting at least between 200-250 attendees during the session in Meropa Casino (Polokwane). The public briefings will be for free.
Enquiries:
Johannes Mokou
Cell: 082 909 1833
Another round of public briefing sessions on amendments to the LRA and the BCEA: Polokwane
