Bargaining council

[Dave A]

I'm pretty interested in the way we are being bludgoened into joining the Electrical Bargaining Council.

The Labour Relations Act states that if over 50% of an industry is registered with its bargaining council, agreements of the bargaining council are binding on unregistered participants in the industry.

This implies that membership of the bargaining council is voluntary, ie a choice by the company.

However, we are being told that if we have employees we have to register with the bargaining council???

By my understanding, being registered means we are entitled to have input into bargaining council decisions. But the real question here is why would a small electrical company want to be registered?

Big companies I can understand, but small companies - what are the benefits?

And is all this talk of "must register" actually legitimate?

[Nicky]

Bargaining Council

Hi Dave,

So what have they done to annoy you?!!! (or should I say what haven't they done!)

[Dave A]

Hi Nicky and welcome.

Well for a start, when I asked them for information about the bargaining council, the anwer was: "You fill in our forms and we send you a bill. That's all you need to know". Not quite the level of detail I was looking for.

So now rather irritated by the attitude I started some research. Not easy given the remarkable lack of info published.

Essentially, a number of provisions and principles of the Labour Relations Act have been contravened, including failing to publish agreements as required. Some of the decisions around pension funding have been a bit dodge too.

Ultimately, I fail to see why small contractors support the bargaining council - in theory we are being herded together so that labour only has to negotiate once - very useful for labour representatives. And this story that we have to register....

And then there all the petty little aspects of the agreements.... KISS it is not.

Oh. I could go on and on but it's the weekend - time to relax

[Nicky]

Bargaining Council

I share your frustrations with the Bargaining Council. It seems everyone is going along with being told they have to join instead of standing up to them and saying NO or asking questions. What about the employees who don't want to contribute but have to? The representative who came to see me and insist that I join basically admitted that the BC was in a bit of a "mess" at the time and he was assisting in "sorting" it out. Very reassuring for someone being forced to contribute.

I would be very interested in hearing what else you have discovered Dave so when the week-end is over do tell?

Are there other members who feel strongly about this?

I recently read an article about a business owner who simply had to close his doors as he could not afford to adhere to the BC rules.

I am both amused and irritated to see that they simply "bill" or "invoice" you even though it is not accurate or correct. How much extra work are they creating (and are they on top of things) when many companies' payrolls for the electrical industry vary from month to month? And then once you have submitted the actual return and payment they do not issue you with a correct, accurate invoice! So what's the point of issuing incorrect invoices?

Employment contracts according to the Bargaining Council also annoy the hell out of me... but that's another story!

[murdock]

i was told i had to join so like all the other sheep i too joined got the estimate but found levies for both myself and my employees for the ECA wich i had just paid over R1000 to join so i contacted them and requested an explanation...they first told me i had to just pay then i got a letter stating that i had to now pay penalities and interest so i told them to de-register my company i then got a letter with reduced amounts...i am still not sure what to do i dont have money to waste on legal fees and i dont know if i have to ay these so called levies which they cant explain why i have to pay...i am told they are admin cost just pay or suffer the penalties wich will add up if i dont.

[Dave A]

The non-unionised employee levy to go to the unions is particularly interesting. Perhaps that is the bit they dropped when you questioned it?

Pretty much every electrical contractor I've spoken to is grossly unhappy about the bargaining council. I just don't understand why it's still there as it seems it is the sign-on from employers that is giving the 50%+ needed to keep it in place. Organised labour don't seem to have enough union members on board to carry the day.

When I get a decent gap, I think I'm going to work on dissecting the LRA here, particularly the section on bargaining councils.

[Vincent]

Recently I was at a SACCI (formerly SACOB) SME meeting and around the table were a few bargaining council representatives. At the end of the meeting a labour broker did a short presentation on bargaining councils. The people around the table, bar the BC representatives, all agreed that BC provide no benefit to SMEs except adding to their costs. I casually suggested that BCs should be dissolved and let the LRA and BCEA guide businesses and allow an old system that was formed in the 1940s to 'die.' You can imagine their response!

[Dave A]

This was the bargaining council representatives who had an adverse reaction?

Let's think about this - We propose to shut down your bargaining council operation which is providing you with a rather comfortable livelihood. Their reaction "Yes please - bring it on."

I don't think so.

Never mind that bargaining councils have been closing businesses (quite literally) for years.

But it goes beyond the bargaining council staff. There is a whole financial mini eco-system there. Which ordinarily I wouldn't have much problem with if it was adding value at least commensurate with its cost.

One of my little mantras when things look messy and obscure - If you want to figure out what is really going on and why, follow the money.

[Ryss]

Sounds like the EBC has a few admin issues they need to resolve. Having been involved in the Textile Industry BC I can share some light on the general trends.

Unions are very pro the idea as it means that they can get away with much fewer skilled negotiators. In fact they only need one instead of hundreds, each negotiating at plant level.

From an employers point of view, wages increases are generally lower with centralized bargaining as the increase tends to be deflated by pressure from employers who can not afford increases.

In the textile industry one had some major players as well as some sections of the industry that where made up of small employers. So maybe fairly similar to the electrical industry.

Either way employer associations should represent the interest of of each segment of the industry and fight for the interests of the employers it represents. (Electrical Contractors Employers Assoc or such like) The Employer Associations that are party to the agreement will be listed as such in the published agreements.

With proper representation on the bargaining council, made up of employer and Union representatives, the problems of BC admin can be fixed or the administrator can be fired if he is not doing his job properly, which is in the interests of both the Union and the Employers.

So compare this situation with the possibility of an active Union Organiser hounding each employer separately. I would take the BC costs anyday in preference to that, but then it must be run efficiently.

Another advantage is that the BC should settle disputes within the industry. If this is done properly, it is maybe better than having to go to the CCMA.

Hope this is of some help.

[Dave A]

So large employers win. And small businesses get gently shafted. I don't believe for a moment that the agreement is set at the level of the weakest link.

Also, consider for a moment if the vast bulk of the industry is made up of small businesses. It is not economically viable for union negotiators to hound small businesses with small staff complements. The negotiator costs will exceed the union fee income.

When it comes to comparing electrical contracting and the textile industry, a really small textile concern would be a giant in the electrical contracting industry.

[Amber_jo]

Bargaining council madness!

Dave, what became of this thread? Did you get anywhere?

I would truly appreciate feedback as the electrical bargaining council has now decided to come and do a spot check on our company. We are a small family run aircon company with 12 employees. We have suffered from severe, severe fraud/theft this year and have had to retrench 2 employees due to these losses.

Now the EBC has threatened us with" If you dont deduct the fees from your employees, we will close your company". I thought these people are meant to be fighting for our employees rights? But they are so quick to take away our employees jobs? Its ridiculous.

We, as the employer, do not mind at all paying our half of the prescribed fees. If you have employees these fees are to be incurred.
BUT - our employees do not wish to belong to this council!! They cannot afford to pay over money to a pension/provident fund. I know I would go ballistic if someone told me I must now pay a percentage of my wages over to a pension fund. Im 23. I need to use every last cent of my paycheck in order to survive. The government has declared the country is in a recession. Times are hard. Not many people can afford to save anymore. And now they are literally forcing them. So maybe they wont have enough food this month or be able to afford enough nappies or doctors visits but yippy, they will have a provident fund. This is their money!!! And they are pleading with me to find a way not to deduct it. Everywhere I turn to, all I hear is I will have to find a labour law specialist. Our company cannot afford that right now.


Please let me know if you found a loophole or got advice.
I dont know how to face our employees at the end of this wage month.
They dont understand. All they see is more money being deducted.
The turnover of unskilled workers in the aircon trade is high and most of the guys will never claim their funds.

[murdock]

they are going to expect you to increase their wages to cover it...this is what happened to me...and if you dont they go slow etc etc...thats why all i can say is thank goodness i down scaled (got rid of the lot) and went the technology route...rather than labour intensive...i now only have myself and 1labourer...no more labour hearings


i feel for you because you need staff to carry out services and installations.

[Dave A]

We, as the employer, do not mind at all paying our half of the prescribed fees. If you have employees these fees are to be incurred.

Personally I'd rather be paying it to the employees who were part of making it to spend as they see fit.

Times are hard. Not many people can afford to save anymore. And now they are literally forcing them. So maybe they wont have enough food this month or be able to afford enough nappies or doctors visits but yippy, they will have a provident fund. This is their money!!!

One of the core issues, obvioulsy.

Everywhere I turn to, all I hear is I will have to find a labour law specialist. Our company cannot afford that right now.

And there is also the possibility of losing the case...

I'll haul out the notes I made at the time and give some more details, but the gist as I recall is it's going to take some pretty concerted action to put an end to this. I originally started the thread to guage how much support there might be to effect some change on the issue.

I'd assumed interest was low by the lack of replies. But looking at the page views... I had no idea this thread was getting this much attention.

[Dave A]

Something I should have asked earlier:

Amber - as an airconditioning company, why are you being forced to join the electrical contractors bargaining council?

[Gerald]

The dogmatic "bargaining" council of the Western Cape

I would like to appeal to all that have either posted in this forum or interested parties to unite and challenge the Bargaining Council. We intend to seek legal advice to institute a class action so that the costs can be shared across the parties with an end to getting a ruling that SME and ME do not have to register with the Bargaining Council.

Our company has been instructed to implement the wage increase, we appealed and submitted financial data and highlighted that there is a recession at the moment. Most of our staff currently are on rates that are above the new minimum wage determination. We also consulted with our staff and offered to halt retrenchments and short time if unanimous agreement was reached to freeze wages until the turn around comes. The Bargaining Council has heard our application and replied with a letter stating that we are unsuccessful as they deem that our financial position does not warrant this (they can always make an offer to the shareholders if they think they can profit out of our business) as we have not shown a profit since last year.

It is clearly evident that the only reason that the increases have been ordered is to continue the growth of annual revenue of the Bargaining Council, and that if not implemented they would not receive their own increases in earnings. They need a reality check as companies are closing down due to the current economic climate.

1. We don’t accept that the Bargaining Council has achieved its 50% membership within the scope of the Labour relations Act.
2. We also do not agree that the ECA can represent our company as we are not members.
3. We intend to defend our actions in court and are in the process of seeking legal council.
4. We want the Minister of Labour to table a newly revised amendment to the relevant Acts to enable smaller businesses to compete with the large organisations insofar as labour relations.

If the big electrical companies benefit from this type of closed negotiation then the law should make membership voluntary to the Bargaining Council. If the electrical workforce finds this in there favour then they will migrate to the larger companies and us smaller companies will be forced to pay higher rates to secure our part of the work force. Effort should rather be given to tighten the laws around who completes electrical work and the subsequent issuing of the COCs and the lack of issue by unscrupulous contractors.

Dave, I would appreciate very much if you could make any data available from your previous delving in this subject and your comment thereon.