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The Citizen
4 days ago
- The Citizen
Children must be in school, not at work
Despite the decline, child labour persisted. Child labour has sharply declined in post-apartheid South Africa, due to the department of employment and labour's enforcement of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, according to experts. This became apparent with World Day Against Child Labour last week. First declared by the International Labour Organisation in 2002, World Day Against Child Labour is intended to foster the worldwide movement against child labour. According to United Nations agency Unicef, child labour still affects nearly 138 million children worldwide. Unicef maintains children globally are routinely engaged in paid and unpaid forms of work. Cosatu national spokesperson Matthew Parks said while the Act prohibited the employment of minors, South Africa has seen 'many employers ignore it'. Where some of the abuses occur Parks said significant abuses occurred in the agricultural, transport and retail sectors. 'Cosatu and its affiliates have focused on ensuring employers comply with the labour laws – exposing those who break the law and reporting offenders to the department of employment and labour,' he said. 'We are encouraged by the department's recent recruitment of 10 000 labour inspectors and plans for a further 10 000 next year. These will be a powerful boost to enforcing labour laws. 'Children must be in school, not at work,' said Parks. ALSO READ: Witness 'too scared to testify' in Chinese human trafficking and child labour case Decline Prof Lucien van der Walt, director of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit at Rhodes University, said child labour has 'to a large extent, sharply declined in post-apartheid South Africa'. 'It is illegal,' said Van der Walt. He said there were third party audits on child labour, conducted by the Sustainability Initiative of South Africa and the Wine and Agricultural Ethical Trade Association. 'A key effect in sectors like agriculture, which used to make fairly extensive use of child labour, no longer do so,' he said. 'A 2025 study by Derek Yu, Simba Murozvi and Clinton Herwel found that child labour under the age of 15 has decreased to less than 1% in commercial agriculture.' Despite the decline, child labour persisted. 'The ability and willingness of the state to carry out inspections is limited, with inspectors sometimes relying on employers' accounts,' said Van der Walt. 'Regulations are in practice, mainly enforced against larger businesses and employers, including farms. 'Statistics tend to only capture regulated activities and work for money. 'Millions are not in reality, covered by regulations – either because of how regulations are framed or because regulations are just not enforced.' Informal sector He said patterns varied by region, 'but there is evidence of ongoing child labour in unregulated or so-called informal parts of the economy'. This included family businesses – based at home or on the street, including small-scale family farms, casual, domestic and taxi labour. 'Not all of this is paid in wages – often it is driven by the family's situation,' he said. 'While larger, regulated employers, have little reason these days to draw on child labour, there is a large pool of unemployed adults, as well as cheap immigrant labour. Such labour is often important in the informal economy.' The informal economy was 'often praised by government and the media, as an engine of growth and jobs'. 'But this romantic picture, hides the reality of battles to survive: low incomes, insecure work, lack of protections, minimum wages, social insurance, abuses like stolen wages, union-bashing and some of the worst working and employment conditions in the country.' NOW READ: New employment code aims to address SA unemployment crisis
IOL News
09-06-2025
- IOL News
Ongoing inspections reveal undocumented workers
The Department of Employment and Labour continues its oversight of construction sites in Knysna. Image: Department of Employment and Labour A year after the George building collapse, which claimed the lives of 34 people and left 28 injured, the Department of Employment and Labour continues oversight on construction sites in towns such as Knysna, which saw multiple undocumented foreign nationals taken into custody and the sites closed temporarily. In a statement, the department confirmed that during a multidisciplinary and unannounced inspection held on June 3, they visited the construction and hospitality sector in Knysna, where several undocumented workers were found. 'At one construction site, gross contravention to labour legislation was discovered, which led to the temporary closure of the site,' said the department. 'Multiple undocumented foreign nationals were taken into police custody on site, all thanks to the swift work of the joint venture between the department's Inspection and Enforcement Services (IES) unit, the local Knysna police office, as well as Home Affairs' Border Management Authority. 'The blitz inspection forms part of the department's service delivery campaign in Knysna. #Yazini #Delservices #workersrights.' Teboho Thejane, chief communications officer, said as it was a multidisciplinary blitz, they could not comment formally on undocumented persons, when asked how many persons were detained. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad loading 'As labour migration Act is outside our scope we do not effect arrests, but we look at, Basic Conditions of Employment Act,(BCEA), National Minimum Wage Act, (NWM), Labour Relations Act, ( LRA), Employment Equity Act, (EEA ) and, Occupational Health and Safety Act, (OHSA) just to mention a few," he said. 'Inspection and Enforcement Services (IES) nationally does have proactive and reaction inspection in different sectors, inclusive of contraction. Construction is one of the sectors under our radar. Because such blitz inspections include other role players as they are multiciliary when they are arranged and finalised we will inform accordingly.' In January, the Department of Employment and Labour carried out a similar blitz in Camps Bay where 10 illegal immigrants were found working at restaurants, and their employers held accountable, with one arrested. The Department of Home Affairs's David Hlabane did not respond to queries. Just last week, the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Dean Macpherson, received the final report from the Council for the Built Environment (CBE), through its body Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA), surrounding the tragic George building collapse. He said the department will carefully study the report to develop a pathway forward to ensure such a collapse never happens again. Earlier, the George Municipality also confirmed that the final report involving the independent structural investigation of the site, which was commissioned and undertaken by the Engineering Design Services (EDS), has been handed over to the police. Human Settlements Minister, Thembi Simelane, said via a report that the municipality was at fault for approving the apartment block's plan when it was already in the process of construction.
IOL News
23-05-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
South Africa's municipal workers gain surrogacy leave rights
The SA Local Government Bargaining Council has amended its leave collective agreement, to pave the way for three months' paid surrogacy leave following an out-of-court settlement. Image: File Municipal workers in surrogacy arrangements are now entitled to three months' paid leave, like biological and adoptive mothers, following an agreement reached at the SA Local Government Bargaining Council (SALGBC). Parties to the SALGBC – the SA Local Government Association, SA Municipal Workers' Union, and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) – concluded the agreement providing for parents in surrogacy arrangements. In terms of the agreement, parents in surrogacy arrangements will be entitled to the same leave as biological and adoptive parents. According to the bargaining council, the agreement will be applicable retrospectively from October 2023, when the Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg, Deputy Judge President Roland Sutherland declared invalid some provisions of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and corresponding provisions of the Unemployment Insurance Fund Act. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ The judge found parts of both acts invalid because of inconsistency with the Constitution to the extent that the provisions unfairly discriminated between mothers and fathers, and between one set of parents and another based on whether their children were born of the mother, were conceived by surrogacy, or were adopted. Judge Sutherland also ruled that any employee who is a commissioning parent in a surrogate motherhood agreement is entitled to leave. Earlier this month, the SALGBC advised municipalities to take all necessary steps to give effect to the amendment and display the circular sent by the bargaining council general secretary, Bill Govender. The agreement on maternity, adoption, and surrogacy leave states that employees adopting a child under three months as well as those who are commissioning parents in surrogacy motherhood arrangements are entitled to three months paid maternity, adoption, or surrogacy leave with no limit to the number of confinements, adoptions, or surrogacy confinements. 'This leave provision shall also apply to an employee whose child is stillborn. Maternity, adoption, or surrogacy leave may commence four weeks before confinement,' reads the agreement. Imatu, which represents over 110,000 employees in the local government sector, described the fully paid surrogacy leave as a groundbreaking victory for women's rights. The union said this breakthrough recognised the evolving nature of parenthood and affirms the principle of equality in the workplace, regardless of the path to motherhood. Imatu initiated two separate urgent Labour Court applications involving its members who were commissioning mothers in surrogacy arrangements.
IOL News
21-05-2025
- Business
- IOL News
Labour Court rules in favour of pregnant employee in discrimination case against paint company
The Labour Court has determined that a paint company, which placed a pregnant worker on early pregnancy leave as she could no longer work among the paint chemicals, and it had no other work for her, discriminated against her. Image: File A paint company, which was found to have discriminated against a pregnant employee who worked for it by placing her on unpaid maternity leave months before she was due to go on leave, was ordered to pay her 11 months' back pay. Daisy Moleme turned to the Durban Labour Court, where she sued her now former employer under the Employment Equity Act and the non-compliance with the Basic Conditions of Employment Act. Moleme was employed by Induradec Coatings as a chemist, and her duties included aspects of both research relating to, as well as the development of products for the employer, a chemical coating company. Having fallen pregnant some 12 weeks earlier, Moleme notified her employer of her pregnancy in March 2023. She was concerned about continuing to work in the laboratory, which would expose her to certain chemicals. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad Loading She requested to be moved out of that environment, and she was moved to another office, but for two months, she was assigned no duties. This was after her manager had agreed that she would be provided with a computer to enable her to carry out such limited functions as she was able to while she was away from the laboratory. The company, meanwhile, tried to obtain professional guidance as to how to handle Moleme's situation, as the paint company uses a variety of raw materials in the chemical makeup of its products, and it feared that this could affect the unborn baby. All safety data sheets were available, but the literature does not specify pregnant persons; it said. In May 2023, the company told Moleme that she was placed on early maternity leave without pay, as it was unable to use her. She was also told by her manager that the company was 'not getting value for money' at that stage, as she had fallen pregnant. The court acknowledged that the company did obtain expert opinions on how to handle Moleme's situation. It was advised to accommodate her elsewhere in the company, but it did not do so. It also accepted that by placing her on unpaid maternity leave, the decision was not made with deliberate intent to discriminate against her on account of her pregnancy. But, the court said, the failure to utilise her services outside of the laboratory evinced complete indifference not only to its legal obligations but also to the negative consequences which would inevitably and foreseeably befall the applicant by being deprived of the ability to earn her salary. 'It can further not be doubted that whilst on maternity leave, whether paid or not, pregnant employees by virtue of their absence from the workplace in certain instances invariably lose out on advantages of being at the workplace, such as bonuses, promotions, and career development in the form of training and development offered to other employees,' the court stated. It concluded that pregnant women continue to worry about the prospects of their continued employment once they disclose their pregnancy or even after childbirth. In the case of the applicant, the invariable consequences of pregnancy were exacerbated by how the company treated her, the court stated.
Daily Maverick
11-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Maverick
Changes to overtime pay causes Gauteng state doctors to gear up for health department fight
Trade unions, medical associations and universities are raising the alarm that Gauteng budget cuts at the cost of doctors' take-home pay will have dire consequences for public sector health. Meanwhile, the National Minister of Health has convened a committee to review the future of overtime for state doctors. Dysfunction in the Gauteng Department of Health hit home hard for many public sector doctors on 29 April when their overtime payments due for the month went unpaid. The non-payment came without notice and affected medical staff in facilities across the province, according to the South African Medical Association (SAMA). Only by Tuesday, 6 May did some doctors start to see payments reflect in their bank accounts. More payments are expected soon, given that, according to the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, the employer has seven days to settle, said SAMA. As a fixed amount, commuted overtime is predictable supplemental income and for many doctors, it amounts to about a third of their take-home pay. But tensions are rising as this payment blunder follows a protracted row over the department's unilateral decision to cut and change the terms of commuted overtime in the province. Proposals to cut down on commuted overtime come in the light of a very tight provincial health budget. As with most other provincial health departments, Gauteng's health budget has been shrinking in real terms for several years. Threats of protests and legal action The delayed payments and the ongoing review of cuts and changes to commuted overtime pay has led to threats of protests and legal action. SAMA says they will make civil claims for salaries owed, including for interest and legal costs. Registrars and medical officers at Dr George Mukhari Academic Hospital in Ga-Rankuwa collectively wrote to the hospital giving notice of withdrawal of overtime services until the non-payment issue is completely resolved. By 7 May, the head of anaesthesiology at Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University wrote to the CEO of George Mukhari, informing him that no anaesthesia services would take place at the hospital starting Thursday, 8 May, given the decision by registrars and medical officers to down tools outside of regular work hours. Those that Spotlight spoke to from the medical fraternity have set out a series of concerns. These include resignations; an exodus of doctors, especially specialists from the public sector; plummeting staff morale; negative impacts on the training of doctors as fewer consultants and seniors are available to supervise — which then puts universities' training accreditations at risk. Ultimately, several sources point out, it is the services offered to the public that suffer. Committee appointed By the beginning of April, there appeared to be some walking back by the Gauteng health department of its unilateral cutback proposals after meeting with the South African Medical Association Trade Union (SAMATU). In the same week, a circular was issued announcing that the national health department was conducting a review of its own, instructing provinces to hold off on their plans. Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi then set up a committee of experts to review certain human resource policies in the public healthcare sector. This includes a review of community service, commuted overtime, remunerative work outside the public service for health professionals, and rural and related allowances. Commuted overtime is a pre-determined amount of overtime that doctors employed by provincial health departments are allowed to work. The amount is historically decided by hospital management and is based on an employee's role, seniority, the department they work in and the amount of overtime they are allowed to safely work. It's a fixed rate of 1.3 times the applicable hourly tariff for a specific work grade. There are five contract options. A is no overtime worked; B is overtime of between four and eight hours a week; C is overtime between nine and 12 hours a week; D is overtime between 13 and 20 hours per week; and an option E is where, on approval, a doctor can be authorised to work more than 20 hours of overtime a week. As a fixed amount, commuted overtime is predictable supplemental income and for many doctors, it amounts to about a third of their take-home pay. The long rumblings to cut their overtime pay has seen doctors being required to motivate why they should remain on contracts that pay for more overtime hours, and junior doctors say they are being pressured to sign option C contracts, which will pay for fewer overtime hours. There are also proposals to change some of the terms relating to overtime, including scrapping overtime payments for doctors who are on call but not physically present at a facility. Many doctors already exceed the maximum hours of their contracts because of the emergency nature of their work, gross understaffing and backlogs at their hospitals. Costly, but essential? The commuted overtime pay model has been contentious for years because it adds up to a sizable chunk of the healthcare budget. According to a spending review conducted in 2022 on behalf of National Treasury, the country's health departments spent R6.9-billion on commuted overtime in 2021. This made up about 70% of the total R9.9-billion spent on all types of overtime. In an editorial published in the South African Medical Journal in April 2025, health sciences academics, associations, and unions slammed the Gauteng health department's handling of pay issues. They argue that the basic salaries of medical professionals in the public health sector are already much lower than what would be considered fair pay. 'COT [commuted overtime] has long served as a critical mechanism to ensure that doctors are available beyond the standard workday, safeguarding round-the-clock care in the public health system… The abrupt curtailment of this framework risks hollowing out the after-hours safety net, leaving emergency rooms, wards and clinics dangerously under-resourced,' they wrote. A co-author of the editorial, SAMA CEO Dr Mzulungile Nodikida, told Spotlight: 'Medical doctors in South Africa's public sector are severely underpaid. A study by SAMA has shown that even the annual cost of living adjustments that have been made on the salaries have not matched inflation in the last five years. Commuted overtime has had the effect of masking a deficient salary.' He said the Gauteng health department has shown itself to be an 'unreliable employer', adding that its relationship with doctors remains fractured as a loss of confidence in the department deepens. 'This breach of the most basic employment obligation: timely remuneration, has cascading effects. It jeopardises morale, compromises service delivery, and calls into question the department's commitment to its workforce. Doctors now operate under a cloud of uncertainty, unsure whether they will receive their salaries at month-end. This anxiety permeates every aspect of the employment relationship, from retention efforts to the willingness to engage in additional responsibilities,' said Nodikida. View from the wards Two doctors who spoke to Spotlight independently, from two different Gauteng hospitals, say the commuted overtime pay disaster is yet another symptom of weak human resources and poor management from the department of health. For them, proposals to cut commuted overtime is the department shirking from addressing the staffing crisis; the need to improve human resources systems; and rooting out corruption, maladministration and wasteful expenditure. Both doctors asked not to be named for fear of reprisals. Dr A, who is based at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, said: 'Instead of having a system in place to record how many hours each doctor is actually working and what overtime that person should be paid, the department pays everyone this commuted overtime fixed sum…. [Y]ou could be a dermatologist or a psychologist and have very few overtime hours, or be a surgeon who is doing a lot of overtime. But you all get paid the same if you're on the same contract option,' she said. 'Right now, in my career, I'm working way more overtime hours than my contract, and I'm not being reimbursed for any of it.' Dr A said the overtime pay cuts and proposed changes will impact her decision to stay in the public sector. 'It used to be the case that you were happy, once specialised, to stay because the overall lump sum of money from your salary and commuted overtime made up a decent pay — not comparable to what you could earn in private — but decent enough to stay,' she said. She said she feels like doctors are now being under-valued and coming under attack by their own employer. 'The message we are getting is that 'if you're not happy, there's the door' — but what the department doesn't understand is that you can't just replace someone with 10 years' experience or someone who has 30 years' experience; it has a huge impact,' she said. 'Our patients are suffering; and every day it's like a game of Survivor. We run multiple clinics in one clinic space at Charlotte Maxeke, but you can't offer a functioning service like that. It's noisy, the computers don't work, and the intercom is going off the whole time. 'The other day, I had a 90-year-old patient have a panic attack in the waiting room. He had been waiting for a while and left his wife, who is blind, in the car. He had to park far from the hospital building because the parking lot from the hospital fire [in April 2021] is still not properly repaired and he was overcome with worry,' she said. Dr B works at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital and he said the debacle over doctors' overtime pay has pushed him to the edge. He said doctors are already overworked and disheartened from working within a failing system. He sent photos to Spotlight of theatres and wards in darkness, as power went off at the Soweto hospital for days at the end of April. He said staff bring in their own toilet paper because they're told there's none. Most alarming, he said 'doctors are not getting the training and supervision they need' and regularly perform surgeries and procedures without adequate experience and with no supervision. 'They are overwhelmed, overworked and doing way too many overtime hours that they're not being paid for. Then they go home overtired, eat a pizza and crash, sleep a few hours then do it all over again the next day, and the next day,' he said. 'We, doctors, are literally the ones putting patients' lives at risk,' he said, adding that he is 'surviving on anti-depressants' and has sometimes shut himself away in hospital storerooms crying tears of sheer frustration, exhaustion and exasperation. Dr B does still count the wins though. It's on the days when he clears an impossibly long patient list of children who need procedures done. It's when he and his colleagues decide to push through to make sure no child's procedure gets cancelled. 'Those are the good days — they're just few and far between. And now the department is coming for us by cutting our overtime pay and forcing us to sign contracts to downgrade our overtime pay,' he said. Resignations and impact on training Professor Shabir Madhi is dean of the faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Witwatersrand. He said the proposed cuts and freezing of posts and changes to commuted overtime pay has already resulted in resignations of some senior staff at state hospitals. 'If we don't have the proper consultant staff complement in these hospitals who can provide supervision throughout the day, it compromises our training of specialists as well as of undergraduate students. 'If the Health Professions Council of South Africa were to do an audit and find that there isn't adequate consultant cover and supervision, they could remove the accreditation of the training programmes offered by the universities. 'The medical schools are completely dependent on the Gauteng Department of Health to retain consultants and other categories of staff, and to ensure that staff are allocated time for supervision and training of future medical doctors, including specialists, as well as other academic activities. 'It means decision-making around cuts to overtime pay need to be cognisant of the overall impact that it would have, and not only in how it would assess budget constraints. This situation needs meaningful and informed decision-making,' he said. Dr Phuti Ratshabedi, Gauteng chairperson of SAMATU, said the non-payment of commuted overtime pay in April was a slap in the face from the provincial health department, as the union had a meeting with the department that month and left with the department agreeing to uphold their contractual agreements to leave contracts terms for commuted overtime pay unchanged at least till the end of March 2026 — the end of the financial year. 'What we saw is that the department will promise one thing, and do another. But we will be holding them to what they stated in their own circular or we will look to legal action. 'What we want to see in this review period is that they go after departments [where overtime is not being performed but being paid for] but leave other departments alone — they cannot put everyone under the same blanket. 'If the government is able to bail out over and over things like Eskom and Transnet, how can they not prioritise healthcare — this sets our country way back, and we doctors will no longer be silent about this,' said Ratshabedi. Spotlight sent questions to the Gauteng Department of Health, including on how the payment delay happened; the number of people affected; how the department is addressing the widespread knock-on effects of their proposed commuted overtime cuts; and what amendments they hope will come out of the national review. Despite several reminders, the department did not respond to our questions. DM
