30/04/2025
Publication: CWAO
Author: CWAO & SWF Press Office
Scrap the new Draft Code of Good Practice on Dismis
For interviews:
John Appolis (CWAO) - 071 5769930
Matsoanelo Motomotomo (SWF) - 071 9146 196
The Casual Workers' Advice Office and Simunye Workers Forum are commemorating May Day tomorrow by joining protests calling for the proposed Labour Law amendments and new Draft Code of Good Practice on Dismissal to be immediately scrapped.
These changes to our hard-won labour laws make it easier for bosses to fire workers, and will have a devastating effect on those people who still have jobs to be scrapped.
(Read our full submission to Parliament's Committee on Employment and Labour here: https://www.cwao.org.za/news-article.asp?ID=556).
The key problems with the new amendments are:
1) The new Draft Code of Good Practice on Dismissal does away with the need for bosses to convene disciplinary hearings before dismissing workers. It says that a boss can hold a dialogue with a worker and then decide to dismiss them. It essentially re-introduces Apartheid practices where bosses could fire workers at will.
2) The Draft Code allows employers the space to fire any worker during probation if they say the worker is “unsuitable”. Currently, a worker on probation can only be fired if they cannot do the job. Workers on probation will no longer be permitted to be represented by a union.
3) The new Draft Code also allows employers to fire workers for incompatibility. The Draft Code expands the scope of incapacity to include the notion of incompatibility. This will lead employers to target workers who, in their eyes, are trouble-makers, who challenge unfair treatment and practices.
4) Workers do not even know about these amendments that have been negotiated secretly in NEDLAC. The negotiations by union bureaucrats from COSATU and FEDUSA seem to have been carried out without the bureaucrats getting mandates from their members, reporting back, or making transparent disclosures about what they were agreeing to. These two federations do not represent millions of workers who were left out of discussions.
Workers won the rights in the current Code of Good Practice through struggle in the 1970s/80s. At that time the foreman or managers could fire workers for any small reason and get away with it. Workers challenged this arbitrary power of managers and forced the Apartheid Regime to grant workers the right to a formal hearing before dismissal. Workers will never agree to go back to the days of Apartheid now!
The CWAO and SWF also demand the right to address the portfolio committee on the Draft Code.
For interviews:
John Appolis (CWAO) - 071 5769930
Matsoanelo Motomotomo (SWF) - 071 9146 196