The latest news this week is that ANC MPs retreated from their initial demand for a complete ban on labour brokers.
The parliamentary portfolio committee on labour voted in principle to restrict the employment of labour brokers by employees to three months.
After three months the employees will become full time employees with equal pay and equal benefits. If the three month regulation is agreed upon, the Labour Minister would then specify to which industries it applied.
This means that after the expiry of the first three months of employment, the fee paid to labour brokers for their services would not be able to be deducted from the workers’ salaries.
Further still is the DA’s call for a provision on strike balloting to be retained. They have also called for labour broking to be regulated rather than banned.
These seem like volatile times for labour laws in our country. It means that employers need to understand what their parameters are in terms of the labour laws.
The proposed legislation already seems to offer greater rights to employees.
Jonathan Goldberg has been at the frontlines of the labour legislation and you can be guaranteed that he will cover these pertinent issues in the upcoming Mid-Year Labour Law Update.