South Africa lost 5.2 million working days to strike action in the last 10 years
An average of 85 strike related incidents per annum have taken place in South Africa over the past decade.
This is according to the annual Industrial Action Report, released by the Department of Labour.
For the first time the report contains a 10 year comparative analysis with a focus on five key measures of strikes, namely, number of industrial actions, working days lost, time-loss ratio, working hours lost and wages lost.
According to the report, Gauteng experienced the highest number of work stoppages as compared to other provinces from 2013-2015. This is most likely due to the size of its provincial economy compared to other provinces.
Disputes over wages, bonuses and other compensation matters remain the main cause of strikes in the country, while the data shows that in most cases wage settlements were lower than the initial wage demands by unions.
In terms of strike duration, more than 61% of work stoppages lasted between 1-5 days in 2013 and 2015; and between 16-20 days in 2014.
Other key highlights set out in the report include:
- The number of strikes, working days lost and number of workers involved in strike in South Africa fluctuated over the past decade, from 2005 to 2015 with an annual average of 85 strike incidents, 5.2 million working days lost and 335,000 workers involved per annum respectively.
- A trend in strikes occurrence has been recorded in the mining (gold and platinum) community, manufacturing and transport industries. Nevertheless, the mining industry has shown relatively higher working days lost as compared to other industries from 2013-2015.
- Over the same period 2013 -2015, the lowest number of strikes was seen in the finance and utilities industries.
- An increase in the number of work stoppages from all economic sectors was also observed between 2014 and 2015. This represents almost 25% of strike increase over the same period. However, there was an 8% increase in strikes increase over the 10 year analysis period. This may be regarded as insignificant.
- In 2015, 55% of the total strikes were unprotected strikes (not complying with the Labour Relations Act) as compared to 48% in 2014.
- The wages lost decreased dramatically from R6.1 billion in 2014 to R116 million in 2015. This represents a decrease of 98% in wages lost in the economy. Over the 10 year analysis period, it represents 62% in wages lost. The variation in wages lost could be attributed to the number of workers who participated in strikes and the duration of strikes for a particular period, the report said.
- There was a fluctuation on working days lost in the past 10 year period. However, the lowest number of working days lost were recorded in 2008 (497,436 days lost). Over the 2015 period, the number of working days lost were 903,921.
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