SACCAWU statement on the landmark Labour Court judgment on the Woolworths retrenchments case

8 April 2016

On the 4th of April 2016 the Labour Court handed down a landmark judgment in the matter between SACCAWU on behalf of members and Woolworths.

The Judgment reinstates members with retrospective to the date of dismissal and further awards costs against the Company.

The essence of the case arises from the Company’s decision to retrench long serving full-time employees and replacing them with non-fulltime and exploitatively flexible types of jobs, as the Company believes in operating through flexible employees.

The Labour Court has found the retrenchments to be procedurally under substantively unfair, hence its order for Woolworths to reinstate workers retrospective from their date of dismissal without loss of pay. This judgment is significant in the current context of the jobloss bloodbath in the wholesale and retail sector where most employers do not engage in a meaningful joint consensus seeking process envisaged in Section 189(2) of the Labour Relations Act.

We have noted that Woolworths has signalled its intention to Appeal against the Judgment and hope that they will not go this route as it will lead to unnecessary delays. We hope the Company will regard the Judgment as a wake up call, which calls for a serious introspection into management’s conduct and attitude towards processes whose end product is condemning workers to the ever increasing pool of joblessness.

Whilst Woolworths has a bad record of super-exploitation of workers, we hope they will use this Judgment as an opportunity to repent and embrace the Decent Work Agenda and further make a positive contribution towards addressing the country’s developmental challenges of eradication of poverty, unemployment and inequality

Issued by Sizwe Pamla on behalf of SACCAWU, 8 April 2016