DA welcomes Labour Court ruling on health lab strike

25 August 2020

The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the ruling by the Labour Court last night declaring planned strike action at the state health laboratory to be unlawful.

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) had planned to go on strike at the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) today. This follows on several days of protest action against wages, the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), and various other issues. Nehawu is seeking an 11% salary increase across the board.

The Labour Court found that the strike would be in breach of the relevant provisions of the Labour Relations Act.

The NHLS provides all the diagnostic tests for patients using the public health sector, including those for Covid-19, HIV and tuberculosis. A full-blown strike at the laboratory would have devastating consequences in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. It would throw the country’s testing-and-tracing regime into disarray.

For Nehawu’s members to persist in withholding their labour at this time would be reckless and selfish, and utterly unconscionable. The Labour Court’s ruling provides important direction.

Issued by Michael Cardo, DA Shadow Minister for Employment and Labour, 25 August 2020