Tag: Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA)

Where the employer fails to attend an arbitration hearing the arbitrator is entitled to continue without the employer unless the arbitrator is aware of an acceptable reason for the employer’s absence.

The Labour Appeal Court recently issued an order refusing to grant leave to appeal against the judgment of the Labour Court, after the Labour Court reinstated an employee who was dismissed for voicing her dissatisfaction with the company’s policy on wearing high-heeled shoes on mine premises.

South Africa’s labour-law regime is difficult, if not impossible, for small businesses to comply with. It imposes a relatively higher cost on them than on large firms. This leads to fewer people employed in small businesses, and often leads to small businesses not being formalised and therefore certainly not complying with the law.

The dismissal of an employee who failed to report the suspicious conduct of her colleague, in relation to missing monies, was found to be substantively fair. The failure of the employee to inform an employer of their business interests being improperly undermined, constitutes derivative misconduct for which dismissal may be afforded. 

The intolerability of the continuation of the employment relationship can be caused by misconduct other than dishonesty.

Hot off the heels of a number of awards by the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) which upheld mandatory vaccination policies in the workplace, the CCMA has recently declared mandatory vaccination policies to be unconstitutional.

Double Jeopardy occurs where an employee is punished twice for the same incident of misconduct. Normally, such discipline would be found to be unfair.

On 4 April 2022, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the National State of Disaster would be lifted with effect from 00:00 on 5 April 2022. One of the effects of this is that the Code of Good Practice: Managing Exposure to SARS-COV-2 in the Workplace (Code) became effective on 5 April 2022.

On 1 January 2019, section 73A of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997 (BCEA) came into effect. This relatively new provision permits employees earning below the prescribed threshold to claim monies owing to them in terms of the National Minimum Wage Act, the BCEA, a collective agreement, a sectoral determination or a contract of employment at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA).

In the case of Maepe vs Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration & another (CLL Vol. 17 June 2008) a senior commissioner at the CCMA was brought to a disciplinary hearing on charges of sexual harassment after he professed his love for a receptionist.