Employees must agree to work-related changes

Ivan Israelstam

Operational circumstances often create the need for employers to change employment conditions.

Such circumstances could include:

• Difficulty in obtaining raw materials may require employees to do different work.
• A takeover or a merger may require standardisation of terms and conditions of employment.
• Market shifts.
• Orders from clients and work volumes may drop.
• New technology may result in changes in working hours.
• Accelerating increases in the costs of employee benefits may require ceilings to be set for the employer's contributions to benefit schemes.
• Increased work volumes or skill shortages may require new working hours.

Modern-day production pressures lead senior managers to transfer such pressures for change onto line management. Line management in turn attempts to relieve the pressure by trying to force the changes through as quickly as possible. This often results in employee-relations problems and contraventions of the law. Labour law severely restricts the employer's right to make such changes without the employees' consent.

Specifically, under the Labour Relations Act (LRA):

• It is not a disciplinary offence for an employee to disobey an unreasonable instruction. And it would not normally be unreasonable for an employee to refuse to work according to new terms and conditions unless this has been agreed to by the employee or his/her representative.
• In a takeover of a going concern, the employer is compelled to retain the terms and conditions of employment of the employees concerned.
• Unfair acts on the part of the employer as regards employee benefits are prohibited.
• The LRA prohibits the employer from firing employees who refuse to agree to changes in terms and conditions of employment.

Specifically, this section provides that:

"A dismissal is automatically unfair if an employer, in dismissing the employee, acts contrary to LRA requirements or if the reason for the dismissal is to compel the employee to accept a demand in respect of any matter of mutual interest between the employer and employee."

This applies where the employer threatens the employee that, if he/she does not agree to a change in terms and conditions of employment, the employee will be dismissed. If the employee then refuses to agree to the change and is consequently dismissed, this could be seen to be automatically unfair.

However, what if the employer needs to change the work circumstances due to its operational requirements? That is, what if, for example, circumstances are such that a new shift system is required but the employees are not willing to agree to the change?  Is the employer entitled to go into a retrenchment process with a view to hiring employees willing to accept the new terms and conditions of employment?

In CWIU and others v Algorax, the employer needed to switch to a new shift system but the employees refused to accept this. The employer then retrenched its employees but consistently said that it would re-employ them if they would change their mind and agree to the new shift system.

The Labour Appeal Court found that:

• The retrenchments could have been avoided or minimised if the employer had got rid of a number of contractors;
• The employer's firm and consistent statements that the employees would be taken back if they agreed to the new shift system showed that the employer had ulterior motives; and
• The dismissals were not genuine retrenchments but were instead a ploy to get the employees to agree to a change in their conditions of employment.

The dismissal was therefore automatically unfair in terms of section 187(1)(c). All the employees were to be re-employed with effect from the date of the court order. In Pedzinski vs Andisa Securities, the employer informed the employee that if she did not agree to extend her working hours to a full day she would be retrenched.

When she was retrenched she took the employer to the Labour Court where it was decided that the employee had been threatened with retrenchment in order to coerce her into extending her working hours. Her dismissal was, therefore, automatically unfair and the employer was ordered to pay the employee compensation equivalent to 24 months' remuneration as well as the employee's legal costs.

While the making of such changes are often justified, employers need to be extremely careful as to how they go about this. Before they begin to implement any changes that affect employees, employers need to get advice from a labour-law expert.

• Ivan Israelstam is chief executive of Labour Law Management Consulting. He can be contacted on 011-888-7944 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Our appreciation to Ivan and The Star newspaper for permission to publish this article.