Suspending employees pending finalisation of investigations and hearings
Employees can be suspended from work in either of two ways. The two species of employee suspension are precautionary suspension and punitive suspension. Punitive suspension occurs when an employer offers an employee a period of suspension without pay, as an...
Lack of transport is no justification for late-coming and absenteeism
So, your car breaks down and you have no replacement; is your employer obligated to accommodate your absenteeism and late-coming that follows? No, they are not. This was he scenario in the Labour Court review application in National Nuclear Regulator v the CCMA &...
Labour Court gets tough on strikers flaunting picketing rules
Strikers, all too frequently, fail to comply with picketing rules, and elect, on the contrary, to behave in a violent and unlawful manner, causing mayhem. This was the backdrop to the recent Labour Court case in Dis-Chem Pharmacies Ltd v Solly Malema and the National...
Sexual harassment is broadly defined
The best place to start when considering workplace sexual harassment is the Labour Relation Act’s Code of Good Practice on the Handling of Sexual Harassment Cases, which was published as far back as 1998. This Code addresses such critical aspects of sexual harassment...
Blatantly discriminatory racist remarks amount to serious misconduct
It should go without saying that racist remarks and language is abhorrent, and is treated as such in labour disputes, if proved. This was the subject matter in the Labour Court case of Juda Phonyogo Dagane v the Safety and Security Sectoral Bargaining Council &...
Concourt clarifies precautionary suspension procedures
The requirement that employers conduct pre-suspension hearings prior to confirming the precautionary suspension of an employee, has been debunked by the Constitutional Court judgement recently handed down on 19 February 2019, in Alan Long v South African Breweries...
Incompatibility can be a case of misconduct or incapacity
Incompatibility between an employee and his or her colleagues can, and often does, result in fair dismissal, on grounds of either misconduct or incapacity. It is a set of circumstances in which an employee is responsible for an irretrievable breakdown in harmony...
Can employers object to employee t-shirts?
How far can employers go in banning employees from wearing t-shirts which the employer considers inappropriate, and can such a ban ever infringe upon a union member’s right to freedom of association? This was the question posed in the Labour Court case NUMSA obo...
Strike management comes to the fore in strike season
Managing strikes is a topical subject, with the current bus drivers strike and the prospects of a teachers, police and nurse public sector strike, also over wages and conditions of service. Section 213 of the Labour Relations Act defines a ‘strike’ as “the partial or...
Employee dishonesty invariably warrants dismissal
Employers are quite rightly entitled to view employee dishonesty in a very serious light. Regretfully, theft-related and dishonesty cases are quite common in the workplace. In our experience, for example, half of the disciplinary cases in the hospitality industry...
The 2019 labour relations outlook
2019 is going to be an interesting year in the South African labour relations environment. There are a number of reasons for this. To begin with, the evolution of the South African Confederation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) will continue to influence the labour relations...
Employer retrenchment do’s and don’ts
There are a whole host of reasons why employers retrench. Whilst the most common reason will be some form of financial stress, the reason for retrenchment could be entirely unrelated to financial difficulty. It could be said that employers either retrench to lose...