Numsa hails ruling on employer body

Johannesburg - The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) has welcomed a Labour Court ruling, which dismissed an application by one employer body to nullify a collective bargaining main agreement signed early this year. The labour union and other engineering industry employers signed the agreement.

"We strongly believe that the application by Neasa to nullify our hard-won collective bargaining agreement was an attack on our rights to collective bargaining and a political strategy to subject workers into poverty wages and squalor as envied by its political master the Democratic Alliance," the union said in a statement.

Employer body the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of SA (Seifsa), which was part of the agreement, also welcomed the judgment and said it believed the ruling further underpinned the provisions of the Labour Relations Act, 1995.

Seifsa executive director David Carson said: "This judgment goes to the heart of statutory collective bargaining arrangements in SA. If some employers in an industry are bound by collective bargaining arrangements and others are not, the result will undermine fair labour practice and fair competition."