Working Paper

The State of Collective Bargaining in South Africa An Empirical and Conceptual Study of Collective Bargaining

In South Africa the central pillar of collective bargaining has historically been provided by
the industrial and bargaining council systems. Statutory councils, an innovation of the new
Labour Relations Act (LRA), appear to have more limited appeal. Outside the statutory system
bargaining takes place at enterprise and plant levels, as well as in non-statutory centralised
bargaining forums (some of which feed into the process of making sectoral determinations).