Thirteen years after its inception, the bargaining council system has,in the words of Godfrey, Theron and Visser, (2007) “proved to be very resilient”, but “it faces some serious challenges”. As figure 1 shows, since 1995 bargaining councils have declined from 80 to 50, a reduction of 37.5 percent. By May 2008, there were 44 registered councils in the private sector and six in the public sector. Both firm- and plant-level bargaining are also on a downward trend. Not all registered bargaining councils are functional. At the time of writing, four councils in the private sector were already in the process of being wound up, so that the number of fully functioning councils is only 40.
The decrease in the number of bargaining councils is attributable to a variety of factors, including mergers, non-functionality, employer resistance to joining and participating in the activities of councils, and poor financial and administrative support by the Department of Labour. But perhaps the biggest challenge facing bargaining councils is the rise in non-standard forms of employment, which has led to declining numbers of union membership as
the traditional core of standard workers gives way to fixed-term, casual and informal workers.
According to the September 2007 Labour Force Survey (LFS), by March 2007, trade union membership stood at approximately 3.1 million out of a total number of slightly over 10 million employees in South Africa. This means that only 31 per cent of workers belong to trade unions while approximately 70 per cent do not. Figure 2 shows union membership by sector and it is notable that the services sectors – retail, finance and community and personnel services, which are the fastest growing sectors of the South African economy – have the highest number of non-unionized workers. At the same time, the construction, agriculture, utilities (electricity and gas supplies) and domestic (private households) sectors have extremely low levels of unionization.
Thirteen years after its inception, the bargaining council system has,in the words of Godfrey, Theron and Visser, (2007) “proved to be very resilient”, but “it faces some serious challenges”. As figure 1 shows, since 1995 bargaining councils have declined from 80 to 50, a reduction of 37.5 percent. By May 2008, there were 44 registered councils in the private sector and six in the public sector. Both firm- and plant-level bargaining are also on a downward trend. Not all registered bargaining councils are functional. At the time of writing, four councils in the private sector were already in the process of being wound up, so that the number of fully functioning councils is only 40. The decrease in the number of bargaining councils is attributable to a variety of factors, including mergers, non-functionality, employer resistance to joining and participating in the activities of councils, and poor financial and administrative support by the Department of Labour. But perhaps the biggest challenge facing bargaining councils is the rise in non-standard forms of employment, which has led to declining numbers of union membership asthe traditional core of standard workers gives way to fixed-term, casual and informal workers. According to the September 2007 Labour Force Survey (LFS), by March 2007, trade union membership stood at approximately 3.1 million out of a total number of slightly over 10 million employees in South Africa. This means that only 31 per cent of workers belong to trade unions while approximately 70 per cent do not. Figure 2 shows union membership by sector and it is notable that the services sectors – retail, finance and community and personnel services, which are the fastest growing sectors of the South African economy – have the highest number of non-unionized workers. At the same time, the construction, agriculture, utilities (electricity and gas supplies) and domestic (private households) sectors have extremely low levels of unionization.
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