Deputy Speaker, let me say that today I am pleased to introduce a number of important amendments to the Labour Relations Act, Act No 66 of 1995, in the form of the Labour Relations Amendment Bill. Let me also remind this House that in the ANC's 2009 election manifesto, it says that, and I quote:
In order to avoid exploitation of workers and ensure decent work for all workers, as well as to protect the employment relationship, introduce laws to regulate contract work, subcontracting and outsourcing, address the problem of labour brokering, and prohibit certain abusive practices, provisions will be introduced to facilitate unionisation of workers and conclusion of sectoral collective agreements to cover vulnerable workers in these different legal relationships and ensure the right to permanent employment for affected workers.
I need to remind this House that the genesis of this is in the clauses of the Freedom Charter and in line with the Constitution that seeks to restore the dignity of all our citizens.
In terms of the Bill, it seeks not only to strengthen the legal basis for ensuring decent work in the South African labour market, but also regulates contract work, subcontracting and outsourcing, addresses problems of labour broking and prohibits certain abusive practices associated with it. New wording and new clauses are introduced in section 198 of the Labour Relations Act. This will have the effect of introducing additional protection for vulnerable workers, employees who earn on or below the threshold prescribed in section 63 of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, limit general temporal employment to a period of three months, allow for the use of fixed-term contracts for up to three months or for a longer period where there are justifiable grounds and making provision for the regulation of part-time work.
There has been a lot of focus on the reduction of the six-month period of temporal employment to this particular amendment. Let me say that the time period was already contested in Nedlac, with business arguing for a longer period and Labour wanting a shorter period. We will have to monitor the responses in the labour market to temporary work being limited to three months.
I should remind members of this House that violence and damage to property during strikes are criminal matters. This is one of the reasons that the clause was rejected. The courts have already ruled on such matters. In 2010, Judge Hlophe found that the constitutional right to strike must be balanced by the right of members of the public to human dignity, to be free from all forms of violence and not to be arbitrarily deprived of property.
As recent events in the platinum mining sector have shown, we have to go beyond the law to find solutions to some of the difficult labour relations challenges that face us today. The current amendments represent a substantial improvement on the 2010 amendments. They allow for the continuity utilisation of temporal employment, but they also regulate temporal employment in ways that will prohibit abuses.
Let me thank the Nedlac social partners for their commitment to social dialogue and their extensive engagement with the proposed amendments. Let me also thank the members of the portfolio committee for their contribution. I should also thank the many interested parties and organisations that submitted comments on the Bills to the department.
Let me further highlight what these Bills respond to. When it comes to the abuses in the labour market, we have highlighted the issue that labour brokers roll over contracts of employees, thereby making workers permanent temporal employees. Workers employed by labour brokers earn less than their counterparts employed by clients, whilst doing the same job.
Workers employed by labour brokers are not able to take up their dismissal cases with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, CCMA, and the Labour Court, and are not able to enforce decisions, because it is unclear who their employer is. Workers employed by the labour brokers often do not have access to social benefits, for example, retirement funds and also the Unemployment Insurance Fund.
The reason why we came up with these amendments was to deal with these abusive practices. Therefore, I will appeal to this House to support the proposed amendments. I thank you. [Applause.]