It is that time of the year when employers start planning for the company’s Year-End Function. Unfortunately, you will always have that small group of employees who consume too much alcohol and gather enough courage to air their grievances with management or colleagues. These confrontations often end in physical fights or verbal abuse in plain sight of other employees or members of the public. Employers and employees are often under the impression that if an employee misbehaves outside normal...

Employers are often faced with allegations of being inconsistent in the application of a rule, be it late-coming or negligence or any other form of misconduct. As per Schedule 8 in the Code of Good Practice – Dismissal, in order to succeed with a substantively fair dismissal for misconduct, an employer must be able to satisfy the following questions in the affirmative: Is there a rule? Did the employee contravene the rule? Was the employee aware, or could reasonably have been expected to be...

Employers often suspend employees in frustration without following the correct procedure, when the employee commits an act of misconduct. It is important to follow the correct procedure when considering suspending the employee in anticipation of a disciplinary hearing and to only suspend for justifiable reasons as the contrary can result in an unfair labour practice. A suspension can be used in 2 instances. In anticipation of a hearing in which case it should always be a paid suspension. This...

Bumping is when employee A who is at risk of being retrenched ‘bumps’ employee B out of his/her position and employee B gets retrenched instead. Bumping is utilized to retain senior, valued staff members who opt to move to a more junior position to remain in the companies’ employ. Bumping has 2 forms namely horizontal bumping and vertical bumping. Vertical bumping is when an employee is bumped to a less favourable position whereas horizontal bumping, bumps the employee into a role of similar...

Employers often ask questions regarding the guidelines to be followed when employees refuse to acknowledge receipt of any labour related document. A labour related document can be regarded as contracts of employment, disciplinary code, company rules and policies, disciplinary procedure documents, retrenchment documents, incapacity procedure documents etc. The most common practices will be discussed below: Contracts of employment In normal circumstances, a contract of employment should be...

In March 2015 SEESA published a newsletter reporting on the amendments to the Labour Relations Act (LRA) that drastically impacted the practices of Temporary Employment Services (TES), a.k.a. labour brokers. In that newsletter we predicted the industry’s extinction. Now, with the Constitutional Court’s ruling on TESs in July 2018, the industry as we know it has come to an end. SEESA Internal Training & Research National Manager, Otto Bronkhorst, shares his analysis of this topic. Leading...

The Right to Freedom of Religion is enshrined under Section 15 of our Constitution as such it is a listed ground. This means that if an employee alleges discrimination based on his religious beliefs the onus rests on the employer to disprove this allegation. The employer could be the State or a privately owned company. This may be a difficult task, however, the employer can raise a defence of inherent requirements of the job and is expected to show reasonable accommodation towards employees....

There are prescribed periods of notice that each employee must give when they terminate their employment. These periods are governed by the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) or applicable Main Collective Agreement from a Bargaining Council which applies to the Industry or Sectoral Determination. Each Bargaining Council also has their own notice periods which must be complied with in that specific sector. For the purposes of this article, we will work with the BCEA but the principle is...