A critical analysis of the legislation governing the acquisi-tion of organisational rights

Abstract

The purpose of this mini-dissertation is to critically analyse the legislation governing the acquisition of organisational rights. To be specific, the study is on the second re-quirement for the acquisition of organisational rights, namely, that the union must enjoy a certain level of representation in the workplace it wants to exercise such rights. The study submits that two keywords in this requirement, namely "representation (sufficient representation) and workplace" have some practical challenges which makes it difficult for trade unions to exercise organisational rights in a given workplace. This challenges includes, inter alia, the silence of the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 on what is meant by "sufficient representation"; the different decisions and the unequal treatment of un-ions regarding their sufficient representativeness; the need for a flexible definition of the term 'workplace" in order to be in line with the Fourth Industrial Revolution which has entailed integration of digital technology into everyday life and has allowed work-ers to work anywhere at any time and the need to raise awareness on what constitutes a workplace where two or more operations are concerned. The study submits that as long as these two keywords are not dealt with accordingly, conflicts between employ-ers and trade unions regarding the exercise of organisational rights, will never cease to exist.