ASSOCIATION NEWS
Update from SASA I can hardly believe that we’re almost half way into 2022 and that winter is around the corner! Here is a summary of what’s been happening in our industry and with SASA since the last issue. From the desk of Tony Botes, SASA National Administrator.
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ovid-19 The State of Disaster has been lifted after more than two years, but precautions are still being imposed for everyone’s safety. Who knows when – if ever – Covid will be a thing of the past? Perhaps we’ll just have to learn to forevermore live with wearing masks and sanitising. National Bargaining Council for the Private Security Sector (NBCPSS) The NBCPSS is still growing in capacity – maybe not fast enough – but a great improvement over what the case was when the Department of Employment and Labour was handling wage complaints. To date, there have been a number of very successful wage prosecutions, some with significantly high restitution orders issued and served on non-compliant
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SECURITY FOCUS AFRICA APRIL 2022
employers. Quite a few were settled in the process, and many have been rubber-stamped by the CCMA (Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration), delivered to the Sheriff of the High Court, and warrants of execution served on these (criminally, in many cases) non-compliant employers. SASA will continue, as in the past, to support the NBCPSS in the drive to identify unscrupulous employers, and assist them and PSIRA (Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority) in bringing them to book. Unfortunately, they are still seriously under-resourced in respect of their numbers of agents (inspectors), but this is being attended to by the ongoing employment and upskilling of additional manpower, which will lead to more prosecutions and a greatly improved level of compliance. That said, stamping out the rife criminality in the industry is a huge
challenge for these two regulatory bodies, which only have about 120 inspectors tasked with policing 100,000plus companies. The Council is also in the process of taking over its administration and financial affairs – currently outsourced – which is another major step forward. Wage negotiations The process of three-yearly wage negotiations, for the period March 2023 to February 2026, has commenced, with a few explanatory meetings already behind us. It’s going to be an extremely difficult exercise to reach agreement, due to the current state of the economy, and having analysed what we believe to be impossible and unrealistic demands from ‘organised labour’ (participating trade unions). Fortunately, the three employer parties – SASA, SANSEA (South African National Security Employers’ Association) and CEO
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