Departments 'hostile' towards arbitration awards

National and provincial government departments have shown a ‘hostile’ contempt for labour courts and arbitration bodies in the past four years as a quarter of all arbitration awards issued against them were not complied with. Business Day reports that this is according to a report by the Public Service Commission (PSC) into non-compliance by departments to awards where they were found to have treated employees unfairly. PSC Commissioner Moira Marais-Martin said that while the scale of non-implementation was ‘not huge’ there was an increase in costs because of litigation in terms of compensation for successful applicants. Marais-Martin said that despite the fact that employees had the right to challenge unfair labour practices and pursue recourse through the Labour Court and other arbitration, government departments often displayed ‘an unhealthy level of hostility’ towards aggrieved employees. The report says the PSC recommends, among other things, that government develops an ‘overarching policy framework to assist where awards are allocated’ so that they do not contravene any of the prescripts of labour law.