Industrial Action Within South over the Past Few Years

Introduction

South Africa has gone through a number of changes and adaptations since the end of the apartheid regime. Our political, social and economic structure had to change from being focussed on one class of people to accommodate all people that live in South Africa to have equal rights. Change comes at a cost. Over the past 10 years our economy has been impacted by a number of things like changing technology, need for strong labour force, and development of land as well as entrepreneurship. Those changes have brought a number of conflicts on the South African labour force. Our economy is dominated by the mining industry, manufacturing, agriculture, transport and government services. That is where a number of conflicts are, that leads the labour force to embark on a strike to try and find solutions that will bring satisfaction and balance in a work place. People have a right to raise their dissatisfactions and to raise their concerns about certain issues; hence the Labour Relations Act no. 66 of 1995 has to deal with such issues.

The Labour Relations Act no. 66 of 1995 defines a strike as:

“The partial or complete concerted refusal to work, or the retardation or obstruction of work, by persons who are or have been employed by the same employer or by different employers, for the purpose of remedying a grievance or resolving a dispute in respect of any matter of mutual interest between employer and employee, and references to work in this definition includes overtime work, whether it is voluntary or compulsory.

A strike can also be described as a temporary stoppage of work by two or more workers in order to resolve a grievance or to enforce a demand. As we can see from the above definition, there are four elements to this definition.

• Strike is temporary stoppage of work, workers are not going to bank work forever but strikers plan to resume their work with the same employer. In most cases, employers will ignore this type of arrangement by dismissing...