Post-1994 labour legislations: An overview of influence on employment relations in emerging markets

Download This Article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the primary labour legislation that was promulgated after the democratization of South Africa after 1994. These legislations were introduced as regulatory and corrective measures for workplace relationships in work organizations (Booysen, 2005; Vettori, 2018). The data for this paper was collected through the perusal of scientific journals, newspaper articles, published/unpublished dissertations and theses, textbooks, and other relevant informative documents. The significant and influential role, which these labour legislations played in the development of a new era of employment relations in South Africa, cannot be overstated. The South African perspective of employment relations is also presented and discussed in this paper to reveal its nature and its role-players, such as the state, trade unions, and employers’ organizations (Ehlers & Jordaan, 2016; Smith & Diedericks, 2016). The workplace relationship between employers (through their management) and employees (through their trade unions), and the effects which such an antagonistic relationship has had on the South African labour market are also addressed (Finnemore & Koekemoer, 2018). The main finding of this paper is that there has been an improvement in workplace relationships, since the implementation of the post-1994 labour legislation although such improvement has been gradual.

Keywords: Labour Legislation, Employment Relations, Role-Players, State, Trade Unions, Labour Market

Authors’ individual contribution: Conceptualization – D.I.N.; Methodology – K.F.L. and I.S.; Data Curation – D.I.N.; Writing – Original Draft – D.I.N.; Writing – Review & Editing - K.F.L. and I.S.; Supervision – K.F.L. and I.S.

Declaration of conflicting interests: The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

JEL Classification: K1, K2, K3

Received: 14.10.2020
Accepted: 21.12.2020
Published online: 23.12.2020

How to cite this paper: Ntimba, D. I., Lessing, K. F., & Swarts, I. (2020). Post-1994 labour legislations: An overview of influence on employment relations in emerging markets. Journal of Governance & Regulation, 9(4), 94-105. https://doi.org/10.22495/jgrv9i4art8