Majoritarianism In LRA

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The Labour relations act (LRA) has been widely regarded as contributing to an unstable collective bargaining in South Africa. This is because the LRA has been viewed as favouring larger unions and conferring advantages to bigger unions. This is motivated by the desire to promote fewer, larger unions that could more effectively and efficiently as a proliferation of small unions has been assumed to result in inefficiency because smaller unions would not be able to service their members to the extent that larger unions would; secondly, larger unions, given their relative bargaining strength, would be able to garner greater gains for the work force; lastly, it is assumed that if larger unions are favoured this would reduce the overall number of…show more content…
Generally speaking majoritarianism finds its foundation in the ancient Greek ideals of democracy and by extension equality . The rationalisation being that conflict was better dealt with by means of discussion rather than warring thus democracy as a conflict resolving institution was seen as the most efficient means of resolving opposing viewpoints. By extension of this ancient view of democracy and its attendant ideals of equality it logically followed that if all people are equal then the viewpoint with the most people would be the most equal outcome. Thus, the origins of majoritarianism are founded in the philosophical understanding of equality between…show more content…
This majoritarianism has led to many problems in bargaining notably that it has the effect of excluding minority trade unions from the negotiations but also because the majority unions may be too big to adequately give effect to all their members’ needs and expectations, this leads to the unjust result where employees are bound to collective agreements that they never agreed to. These employees cannot reasonably be expected to eschew the safety of a trade union and wouldn’t join another minority union who may be more representative of their views. This leads to the possible constitutional challenge that the LRA affords greater protection to some workers/ unions than it does to others which, it is submitted, may fall foul of the equality and freedom of association rights in the constitution. Thus,

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