South Africa loses nearly 1 million working days to protests every year
In a week which was marked by mass action, the Department of Labour has announced that the economy is continuing to suffer due strike action, having lost a total of 946,323 working days as a result of 122 work stoppages in 2016.
According to the department’s acting director general, Vuyo Mafata, this equates to a 4.7% increase in working days lost in 2016 compared to 903,921 days in 2015.
Mafata said most of the work stoppages were due to wage, bonus and other compensation demands.
“In term of wages lost, the South African labour economy lost approximately R161 million due to work stoppages in 2016 compared to R116 million in 2015,” he said.
Mafata said the strike information analysed is based on the information supplied by employers in the Labour Relations Act (LRA) forms after strike incidents ended in workplaces.
“The strike report remains a useful piece of up-to-date information for various stakeholders including government departments, unions, employers, business, international organisations, research institutes, NGOs and students.
The report provides a detailed account of companies affected by work stoppages and disaggregates information by province, duration, industries, nature and reasons of strikes.
Mafata said the report still emphasises the Labour Minister’s concerns around the logic of pursuing strike action to the point where it damages workers’ interests.
“Either way, South Africa needs to find a solution for the seemingly faltering bargaining structure. Government, unions and business have an important role to play to maintain a stable labour force and fair labour practices that will attract investors and inspire economic growth in the long run,” Mafata said.
Report highlights
More work stoppages were experienced during “strike season”, which is the second and third quarters of the year, the report showed.
By nature of strikes, “strikes in-company only” were predominantly higher, contributing to 56% of strikes which took place in 2016. This was followed by those workers who were locked-out at 26%. Most of these work stoppages were due to wage, bonus and other compensation demands.
This equates to a time-loss ratio of 59 working days lost per 1,000 employees, while a total of 7.6 million working hours were lost in 2016 compared to a total 8.2 million in 2015.
Of the nine provinces in the country, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, with relatively high performance economic activities, had experienced more strikes in all the four quarters of 2016.
By industry, the community industry was highly affected by strike incidents, followed by the manufacturing and transport industries in 2016.
Establishments with more than 1,000 employees were mostly affected by industrial action during quarter two and three of 2016 at 41 and 40% respectively.
As reported by the Labour Research Services, the median wage settlement from various industries in 2016 was close to 8% compared to 7.4% in 2015.
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