What Employers Need To Know About The Draft Labour Law And Labour Relations Amendment Bills (Part Two)

What Employers Need To Know About The Draft Labour Law And Labour Relations Amendment Bills (Part Two)

As discussed last month (In Part One), the Minister for Employment and Labour has published draft Labour Law and Labour Relations Amendment Bills, along with Memorandums of Objectives. 

The Labour Relations Amendment Bill will amend the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 (LRA).

The Bill proposes extensive amendments, including:

• Further regulation of ballots for closed-shop agreements.
• Limiting the extension of Bargaining Council agreements to certain new businesses.
• Regulating the extension of Bargaining Council funding agreements.
• Introducing financial reporting standards for trade unions, employer organisations, and Bargaining Councils.
• Amending the functioning of the Essential Services Committee and dispute-resolution processes in essential services.
• Specifying notice periods for socio-economic protest action.
• Allowing the Minister to regulate the retention of ballot records.
• Providing guidelines for cancelling the registration of trade unions or employer organisations.
• Introducing reporting requirements for federations of trade unions and employer organisations.
• Amending the functions and rule-making powers of the CCMA.
• Amending the powers of the Labour Court and Labour Appeal Court.
• Further specifying fair-procedure requirements for dismissals based on misconduct or incapacity.
• Amending the procedure for inquiries by arbitrators.
• Amending facilitation processes for large-scale retrenchments.
• Allowing the CCMA to arbitrate certain discrimination disputes.
• Limiting remedies for employees earning above a prescribed threshold in unfair dismissal and unfair labour practice cases, and empowering the Minister to set that threshold.
• Preventing duplication of claims across forums.
• Introducing limitations of liability for the CCMA and other statutory bodies.
• Extending freedom-of-association and collective-bargaining protections to a broader category of employe