South Africa’s parliament is currently debating amendments to the Labour Relations Act that will change how workers can go on strike. For example, the amendments would require trade unions to hold secret ballots to decide on strike action and introduce a mechanism where strikes could be resolved through an advisory arbitration panel.

The Department of Labour has justified the proposed changes to strike legislation by arguing that they are prevalent, prolonged and increasingly violent. But a look at the data provided in the Department of Labour’s own industrialaction annual reports reveals a different picture.

The data shows that strikes have not particularly increased over the last decade, tend to be resolved in under two weeks and that the vast majority occur peacefully. 
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Assessing the data

Over a ten year period there has been a slight increase in the number of work stoppages (see figure 1). But this is a very imprecise measure of industrialaction as work stoppages vary in duration. It’s therefore more accurate to use the number of working days lost as an indicator of the intensity of industrialaction.


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              Figure 1. Number of industrialactions 2006-2016.
              Department of Labour Industrial Action Annual Reports
            
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Researchers from the University of Cape Town, Haroon Bhorat and David Tseng, did comparative analysis looking at two measures: the depth of strike activity (the number of working days lost per strikers’ working days per annum) and strikers’ intensity (the number of strikers per 1,000 employed workers). They found that South Africa’s depth of strike activity was lower than a number of countries including the United States, Brazil and India. 

They also found that South Africa’s strikers’ intensity was comparable to a number of European states, among them Austria, Finland and Denmark. It was much lower than countries such as Argentina, Spain and Italy. This means that South Africa’s levels of industrialaction are comparable to or even lower than many other middle- and upper-income countries. 

Violent vs orderly strikes