Employment & Labour Law

Labour Law is concerned with the regulation of the employment relationship through the prism of the contracting parties and also through collective bargaining and industrial action. The Labour Relations Act, No. 66 of 1995, Basic Conditions of Employment Act, No. 75 of 1997 and the Employment Equity Act, No. 55 of 1998 are the primary pieces of legislation that apply to labour relations.

Labour Law includes idiosyncrasies not normally associated with typical contractual regiments, a prime example is fairness, which is imposed on the parties by the provisions of the Labour Relations Act. Expectation finds form through industrial action, this allows the majority of a workforce or industry to remove their productive capacity so as to foist a particular bargaining position. The Basic Conditions of Employment Act creates in roads into the parties’ rights to negotiate terms of their own and predicates that certain conditions are implied into the employment contract. The Employment Equity Act precludes discrimination on inter alia, the basis of race, gender, disability and extends the protection of equality to “pay discrimination”.