- Title
- COSATU Submission on the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill
- Creator
- COSATU
- Subject
- COSATU
- Date
- Oct 1997
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/109824
- Identifier
- vital:33193
- Description
- Twenty Months ago, the Minister of Labour, Comrade Tito Mboweni, released a Green Paper on the Basic Conditions of Employment. From April 1996, government labour and business engaged in negotiations in NEDLAC, first over the Green Paper and later various drafts of the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill (the Bill). The primary aim of these negotiations was to agree on the purpose and content of the Bill. COSATU views this piece of legislation as very important as it replaces the current Basic Conditions of Employment Act and Wage Act and provides a floor of basic conditions of employment for all workers - organised and unorganised- including the most vulnerable, such as domestic and farmworkers. Business on the other hand want to preserve apartheid cheap labour practices in the workplace by protecting the current BCEA passed by the apartheid regime at the time when employers had a cosy relationship with government, and the majority of workers were disenfranchised. Employers, using globalisation and international competition as their cover, want to remove obstacles to further oppression and exploitation of workers. If employers have their way, South African workers, who, as the Green Paper points out, already work long hours by international standards, would work even longer hours, with very little or no protection. The challenge facing you as the elected representatives of the people is to send out a signal to workers, through this Bill, as to what you consider to be the minimum employment standards to which every worker should be entitled, concerning basic things like hours of work, periods of sick and maternity leave and rates of over-time pay. Parliament's choice is stark: to lead the process of eradicating apartheid's legacy from South African work places by improving and securing employment standards for ordinary working people or, to give in to those forces who want to turn back the clock and retain the patterns of apartheid cheap labour and worker insecurity.
- Format
- 64 pages, pdf
- Publisher
- Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
- Rights
- No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission from the publisher
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details | SOURCE1 | Cosatu's response to the Basic Conditions of employment bill of Sept 1997.pdf | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details |