South Africa’s Labour Court on Thursday barred the country’s bankers from going on strike set for Friday until proper consultations are done.
Labour Court judge Hilary Rabkin-Naicker ruled that the proposed strike by Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and its affiliate, bankers’ union Sasbo, was unlawful because the unions had failed to adhere to a section of the Labour Relations Act that relates to the need to follow due processes before embarking on industrial action.
The Act provides workers with the right to strike but stipulates that strikes related to socio-economic issues can only be considered to be protected or legal if the representatives of the workers and employers have consulted with each other at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC).
Rabkin-Naicker concurred with the application by Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) lawyers who argued that the workers had rushed to call for a strike without exhausting all channels for negotiations.
Sasbo’s 50,000-plus members had planned to hold marches across major cities of the country on Friday to protest retrenchments in the banking sector.
NEDLAC’s convener for BUSA, Kaizer Moyane said the strike was challenged on the grounds that correct procedures were not followed to ensure it was a protected (legal) strike.
If an agreement could not be reached, NEDLAC would issue a certificate indicating no resolution was reached.
This process, however, was not followed by the bankers, necessitating BUSA to approach the court to stop the strike, Moyane said.
The bankers, in spite of COSATU’s warning them to adhere to the court ruling, said they would appeal against Labour Court’s ruling to enable them to take to the streets to protest the banking industry’s job shedding exercise.
NM/jn/APA