DA stops vote on job-killing Labour Relations Amendment Bill

During yesterday's second reading debate on the Labour Relations Amendment Bill in Parliament the DA managed to prevent the Bill being passed by walking out and exposing the ANC's poor attendance in the sitting, thereby rendering the sitting inquorate. 

The DA took such steps to stop this Bill because it will kill jobs and hurt the poor and unemployed. We could not allow this to happen without a fight.

We will use this postponement of the vote until next term to push for the key amendments to the Bill to be made that will democratise Labour Relations and ensure job creation. These include: 

• Amendments to Sections 64 and 67, which would provide for the reintroduction of the requirement of balloting before a strike;
• Repeal of Section 18 which allows majority unions and employers to agree on thresholds of representativeness for unions to gain organisational rights in a specific workplace or sector. Amendments should seek to establish a universal minimum threshold of representativeness above which organisational rights and participation in collective bargaining cannot be denied to a union;
• Repeal of Section 26 which allows for closed-shop agreements and propose a model of proportional representation in labour bargaining, with firm minimum thresholds for participation to prevent the proliferation of labour representatives in a given bargaining unit;
• Amendments to Section 32 which allows for the extension of bargaining council agreements to parties that were not part of the bargaining process; and
• Amendments to Section 198A to extend the term limit for Temporary Employment Services, or Labour Brokers, beyond the three months contained in the current version of the Bill.

While we are pleased that this bad Bill was prevented from being passed yesterday, it is of great concern that the ANC could not muster the necessary 201 of its 264 members to ensure their own Bill was passed. The ANC was not able to ensure even half of its members were in this House for this important debate. I hope this is not indicative of the new Chief Whip's approach to Parliament. It is a disgrace that the opposition be relied upon to make a quorum to pass legislation it disagrees with and that will harm South Africa. 

We simply will not help the ANC and COSATU pass job-killing legislation that is meant to be nothing more than an appeasement of certain factions in the tri-partite alliance. 

Statement issued by Watty Watson MP, Democratic Alliance Chief Whip, June 21 2013

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter