Legal

Following from the October/November 2018 cover story of BusinessBrief - Politics and Unions: Is workplace disruption for political gain criminal? and the footnote contained in the article, the Labour Court gave a detailed judgement on the issue.

The issue arose as to whether the dismissal of an employee who refused to work contractually agreed upon days due to the tenets of her religious convictions was automatically unfair?

The draft Conduct of Financial Institutions Bill was recently published. Once enacted, the CoFI Bill may become one of the first pieces of legislation that explicitly seeks to develop fintech regulation in South Africa.

Achieving Mining Charter III’s requirements for structuring broad-based ownership, local procurement and social and labour plans is likely to present serious challenges for small scale miners in particular. It may be time to move away from a 'one size fits all' approach in setting charter targets.

The National Minimum Wage Act 9 of 2018 (NMWA) came into effect on 1 January 2019. The NMWA provides for, amongst others, a national minimum wage; the establishment of a National Minimum Wage Commission; a review and annual adjustment of the national minimum wage; and the provision of an exemption from paying the national minimum wage.  

The amendments to the Competition Act, 1998, which introduce criminal liability for cartel conduct, came into effect on 1 May 2016.

The draft Conduct of Financial Institutions (COFI) Bill has been published by the National Treasury for comment. Comments will be accepted until 1 April 2019.

The Employment Equity Act (EEA) known as the ‘equality clause’ was recently amended to make more explicit the remedy for unequal pay based on discrimination. Prior to this, the act did not specifically deal with wage discrimination on the basis of race or gender, despite the Labour Court having held that there were no reasons why equal pay claims should not be claimed in terms of the Act.

On 23 November 2018, the Labour Laws Amendment Bill was signed into law. The Bill provides a minimum period of leave entitlement to employees who are fathers, adoptive parents and parents in a surrogate motherhood agreement, amending the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) and the Unemployment Insurance Act (UIF).

Following the recent landmark decision of the South African Constitutional Court, in which the private and personal use of cannabis was decriminalised, together with the publication of guidelines regarding the cultivation of cannabis for medical, scientific and clinical research purposes, an enhanced interest in the cannabis industry has emerged and investors are keen to be amongst the first to capitalise on the potential growth of this 'green' market.