- Target:
- MINISTER OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY AND THE PRESIDENT OF SOUTH AFRICA
- Region:
- South Africa
BACKGROUND TO A PETITION REGARDING CO-OPERATIVES TO THE MINISTER OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY AND THE STATE PRESIDENT OF SOUTH AFRICA
(If you wish to read the following in isiZulu, Setswana, Sesotho, Sepedi or Afrikaans, please send an email requesting this to sochum2@gmail.com).
A new law, the Co-operatives Amendment Act 2013, has been signed by the president. Whereas up to now worker co-operatives have been exempt from labour laws, under the new law in future they will all (except the very smallest of them) have to apply all labour laws. For confirmation of this new law, please go to http://tinyurl.com/oe45jao (see page 94, section 71) or ask the Department of Labour.
This will mean, among many other things:
• Your co-operative will have to pay bargaining council minimum wages or minimum wages set by the Minister of Labour (where applicable).
• Your co-operative will have to pay bargaining council levies (where applicable).
• Your co-operative will have to pay into bargaining council pension funds, education funds and other funds of the bargaining council (where applicable).
• Unions will have a right to recruit among your co-operative’s members, and organise them.
• Your members will have the right to strike if they don’t like their working conditions.
• It will be much more difficult to discipline or dismiss a member of the co-operative who does not contribute properly.
• You will have to display a notice of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, and this act will regulate your working times and overtime, lunch breaks, leave conditions, etc, etc.
• You will have to submit an Employment Equity Act plan and black economic empowerment assessment, particularly if you want government contracts.
If you do not do the above, your co-operative will be breaking the law and will be liable to pay back pay, back contributions and fines if and when it is found out.
Previously, worker co-operatives did not have to do any of these things.
Most seriously, this amounts to the government telling the co-owners of worker co-operatives what they must pay themselves.
The new law was asked for by the unions and they were extensively consulted about it. But the co-operatives were not consulted about it.
The government and the unions do not seem to understand that co-operatives sometimes have good profits but at other times do not have good profits and cannot always pay all of the above amounts. The government and the unions should have consulted the co-operatives before passing this law.
The above provisions do not encourage job creation and will harm co-operatives. In some cases co-operatives will be so badly damaged by these requirements that they may have to close.
If enough people sign this petition, the government will listen because an election is approaching. This is therefore the time to oppose this new law!
Please therefore:
• Sign the petition below.
• Ask all your co-operative members to sign the petition below.
• Ask all your friends and family to sign the petition below.
It is important to get as many people to sign as possible! There are about 40,000 worker co-operatives in South Africa, but we cannot contact them all.
But we have the power to have this law reversed if you join us!
Note: your email address, which we request in the petition below, is optional. It will not be disclosed as part of the petition – we will only keep it to inform you in future about developments surrounding co-operatives and this petition.
From: Concerned Co-operatives Group: sochum2@gmail.com
PETITION TO THE MINISTER OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY AND THE PRESIDENT OF SOUTH AFRICA
In terms of the Co-operatives Amendment Act 2013, whereas previously worker co-operatives were exempt from labour law, in future they will generally have to comply with all labour laws. This will be very burdensome for them.
This amounts to the government telling the co-owners of worker co-operatives what they must pay themselves. Co-operatives sometimes have good profits but at other times do not, and cannot always pay minimum wages. The essence of a co-operative is that it shares income between its members, whether that income is high or low.
Perhaps the government does not understand this because it did not consult co-operatives before passing this law, which will discourage job creation.
We the undersigned therefore call on you to reverse the new law. Should you not do this, our representatives will approach the Constitutional Court on the basis that this law was passed without consultation with us, the affected parties.
This matter will also weigh heavily on us in deciding who to vote for in the 2014 national elections.
You can further help this campaign by sponsoring it
The Review the Co-operatives Law Amendment Act 2013 petition to MINISTER OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY AND THE PRESIDENT OF SOUTH AFRICA was written by Concerned Co-operatives Group and is in the category Employment at GoPetition.