CWAO IN THE NEWS

*The new NEDLAC Amendment Bill strengthens an elitist, unaccountable institution that has consistently served capital’s interests. The working class should fight for NEDLAC to be closed down instead.*

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Contact person: CWAO Researcher, Sydney Moshoaliba on 072 509 3587

On 7 November 2025, the Minister of Employment and Labour issued a new NEDLAC bill to replace the NEDLAC Act of 1994, with a call for public comment by 28 November 2025.

CWAO submitted its comment last week. (Please email for a copy).

CWAO Rejects the New NEDLAC Amendment Bill: A Tool to Strengthen Elite Rule, Not Worker Power

The Casual Workers Advice Office (CWAO) rejects the newly proposed NEDLAC Amendment Bill, 2025, which seeks to strengthen an institution that has consistently acted against the interests of the working class.

The origins of NEDLAC
NEDLAC’s origins lie in the mass struggles of the early 1990s. What later became NEDLAC first took shape as the National Economic Forum (NEF), a structure forced into existence by the powerful Anti-VAT campaign, which included a national general strike in November 1991. Workers and communities demanded that the apartheid state and big business stop restructuring the economy unilaterally and instead negotiate with organised labour. For COSATU, the creation of the NEF was a

direct assertion that workers had the right to shape the economic future of the new South Africa. This demand for negotiated economic restructuring was carried into the democratic period, and the NEDLAC Act of 1994 formally converted the NEF into the institution now known as NEDLAC.

Inside COSATU, the birth of NEDLAC triggered fierce debates about what “participation in economic decision-making” should mean. Should labour merely manage the contradictions of capitalism through co-determination, or should it push for genuine worker control that could open the road to socialism? In the end, the co-determinist line prevailed.

From its origins, then, NEDLAC was not a gift from the state or capital. It was won through struggle. But the direction it took was shaped by COSATU’s strategic choices, choices that continue to define how workers’ power is expressed, or limited, inside the institution today.

After 30 years of NEDLAC’s existence, working-class communities are poorer, more precarious, and more excluded than ever. Strengthening NEDLAC will only deepen this crisis.

The problems with the NEDLAC Amendment Act
CWAO has delivered a submission to the Department of Employment and Labour outlining our opposition as follows:

1. The Bill strengthens an institution that has consistently failed the working class
For three decades, NEDLAC has provided political cover for neoliberal policies that have devastated working-class communities. It is a pro-business forum and under its watch, unemployment has soared to over 40%, poverty and hunger have intensified, and casual, low-paid, short-term and precarious work has exploded. Rather than providing a space for labour and social movements to oppose big business, it serves as a forum for union bureaucrats to weakly and limply agree with government and business on anti-worker measures. In other words, NEDLAC has helped facilitate the policies that entrenched this crisis.

2. It removes the historic goal of “participation in economic decision-making”
The original NEDLAC Act required NEDLAC to promote working-class participation in economic decision-making. The new Bill deletes this entirely. This signals the final abandonment of a long-held principle of the labour movement and acknowledges big business’s uncontested dominance over economic policy.

3. It expands NEDLAC’s power over labour market policy< br> The Bill requires that all labour market policy—not just legislation—must first be taken to NEDLAC before being issued by the Minister. This means that big business can directly influence government policy too. The issue is that capital wants to re-inforce and legitimize its rule through an elite, unaccountable institution, and that Nedlac as a neo-liberial institution, wants to strengthen this role.

4. It allows NEDLAC to strengthen capital’s influence over parliamentary decision-making
The Bill forces Ministers and parliamentary committees to take NEDLAC’s reports into account when drafting socio-economic legislation. This entrenches NEDLAC as a gatekeeper in the legislative process. It is notable that when government uses tiny and unrepresentative forums like NEDLAC, the community and labour bureaucrats always end up compromising with government, in alliance with big business, but when government holds big public participation meetings in different towns and cities, there is a strong opposition from the workers and residents who attend.

5. NEDLAC’s processes are elitist, secretive and unaccountable
Recent labour law amendments were negotiated behind closed doors by bureaucrats, technocrats and lawyers. Workers, shop stewards and union members were excluded from the process entirely. There were no social movements represented, even though they have hundreds of thousands of members. The unions that were represented through COSATU and FEDUSA failed to report back to their members who did not even know that labour laws were being changed, long after their leaders had agreed to this. NEDLAC has become an institution where decisions about workers’ lives are made without workers.

6. NEDLAC excludes the majority of workers, especially the most Vulnerable
Only 23% of workers belong to unions represented in NEDLAC. The majority of today’s workforce—labour-brokered, seasonal, outsourced, casual and contract workers—are not represented at all. The Bill strengthens an institution that systematically excludes the very workers most affected by labour market changes - a massive 77% of all workers!

7. The Bill tightens control over community representation to favour Capital
The community constituency will now be restricted to a single “most representative” NGO federation, admitted or removed by the Minister on the recommendation of the NEDLAC executive. This allows the state and capital to hand pick compliant civil society actors while excluding independent, grassroots community organisations and mass-based social movements.

8. Strengthening NEDLAC helps manufacture consent for capital amid political crises< br> With the ANC in decline and the GNU lacking legitimacy, capital faces a crisis of political representation. Strengthening NEDLAC helps capital secure the appearance of consensus and stability, even as its policies deepen social suffering. NEDLAC is being repositioned as a legitimacy machine for a failing political order.

9. COSATU relies on NEDLAC for institutional relevance—not for worker Power
COSATU no longer bases its power on strong, organised workplaces but on its presence in elite state institutions like NEDLAC. The Bill helps maintain COSATU’s political relevance even as its real organisational base collapses. COSATU’s participation in NEDLAC now undermines worker power rather than building it.

10. NEDLAC has consistently legitimised anti-worker policies
From the first post-apartheid neoliberal macroeconomic policy introduced in 1997 (GEAR) to labour flexibilisation, NEDLAC has been used to create the illusion of consensus for policies that serve capital. Strengthening NEDLAC will further entrench its role as a mechanism for controlling working-class resistance and giving political cover to attacks on workers’ rights.

NEDLAC Must Be Scrapped, Not Reinforced

The NEDLAC Amendment Bill is designed to strengthen elite control at a moment of deep political and economic crisis. It will further marginalise the working class and tighten capital’s grip over economic and social policy.CWAO calls on all workers, community organisations and progressive forces to oppose this Bill. The struggle for genuine democracy and freedom requires dismantling institutions like NEDLAC, which exist to manage and contain working-class power.

Only through mass struggle will new democratic forms emerge that advance the real interests of the working class.

Issued by: Casual Workers Advice Office (CWAO)

Category: PRESS RELEASE | NEDLAC AMENDMENT BILL