a) Public Services employees are entitled to 36 sick leave days over a 3-year cycle as part of their basic conditions of services. In addition, the Annual Report of the National Department of Health publishes leave usage statistics on a year-to-year basis. These leave days are captured on the Transversal system that is administrated by National Treasury (PERSAL). The statistics are as follows:
Year |
Total Sick Leave Days |
Number of Employees using Sick Leave |
Average Days per Employee |
2019 |
7578 |
984 |
8 |
2020 |
1036 |
339 |
3 |
2021 |
2374 |
425 |
6 |
2022 |
5924 |
796 |
7 |
b) The Labour Relations Act (LRA) defines a strike as “the partial or complete concreted refusal to work, or the retardation or obstruction of work, by persons who are or have been employed by the same Employer or by a different Employer, to remedy a grievance or resolve a dispute in respect of any matter of mutual interest between the Employer and Employees.
Furthermore, the section 64 of the LRA stipulates two procedural requirements that should be met for a strike action by employees to be protected and they are as follows: -
In the Department there was no strike action, rather there was a work stoppage due to non-compliance of the infrastructure/ building to Occupational Health Safety legislative framework.
END.