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Doctoral Degrees (Labour Law)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10413/8406

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Labour Law) by Author "Reddi, Managay."

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    Extension of social security benefits to women in the informal economy: a case for maternity protection.
    (2021) Hicks, Janine Louise.; Reddi, Managay.
    This study addresses the central issue that only workers recognised as ‘employees’ by South Africa’s labour law framework qualify for social security benefits. It highlights that, as a result, self-employed and atypical workers have no access to maternity benefits in the form of paid maternity leave, resulting in financial hardship – particularly for those in informal employment. The study finds that this exclusion constitutes a violation of core constitutional rights to equality, dignity, life, health, social security, and those of children, and a failure on the part of the state to give effect to its legal obligations in terms of international law. It argues further that the state’s differential treatment of self-employed workers, and the resulting impact on their constitutional rights to equality and dignity, constitutes unfair discrimination, which would not be permitted in terms of the limitations clause. Equally, the study considers the policy advocacy strategies utilised by self-employed women in the informal economy, to mobilise and lobby for law reform to address the violation of their rights. It examines whether state institutions supporting democracy, such as the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE), can play a role in initiating law reform processes to leverage state accountability on its gender equality obligations and commitments. It concludes that current weaknesses within the National Gender Machinery (NGM) undermine this potential, and that the measures required for the CGE to take up and act on an individual complaint and escalate this to the national policy level, are unsustainable and indicate failed institutionalism. The study examines best practice in countries of similar socio-economic status to South Africa, finding that such countries have successfully extended maternity benefits to self-employed workers through affordable, administratively efficient mechanisms that give effect to key components of International Labour Organisation Maternity Convention 183. The study draws out practical design and implementation considerations that would need to be addressed by the state, to ensure that the most vulnerable category of self-employed workers – predominantly in the informal economy – would be able to access maternity benefits, making recommendations for the South African Law Reform Commission process currently underway.
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    The postcoloniality of labour law: a South African perspective.
    (2020) Maqutu, Lindiwe Nomachezi.; Mnyongani, Freddy Duncan.; Reddi, Managay.
    This study locates itself in endeavours to decolonise the accepted legal knowledge. It concerns itself with the formation of South African labour law and reflects critically on the ideology informing the concept of labour and labour law since the colonial incursion of Europeans. A contrapuntal examination of the law which developed a wage labour system that denied Africans pertinent recognitions and entitlements is carried out using the vantage of postcolonial theory. The process advances revisiting the text of laws from a locus that centres the predicament of Africans rather than colonial preoccupations. Therefore the narration of the management of Africans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the convoluted interaction between evolving social, political and economic institutions is revealed as labour law. With a particular focus on the circumstances of African mine workers in the then Transvaal, the study widens the understanding of historically operative labour law. Using early law, this study maps the development of an appetite for cheap labour following colonial invasion, which accelerated with the discovery of mineral deposits in South Africa. A comprehensive disclosure of the founding assumptions of labour law, such as territorial seizures, enslavement, corporeal deprivation and the development of corresponding property rights, highlights the damage wrought. An excavation of the often-overlooked objectives and repercussions of legal provisions reveals that they rested on the conviction that African humanity ought to be downgraded. It began with the superior-inferior reasoning that yielded the master and servant positioning of relations between the white arrivals and Africans. The attempts to resolve the ‘native question’ were the fulcrum of the conceptual order that has been devised. An examination of the post-apartheid hegemony of labour law considers whether the retention of the Eurocentric structures, under which labour relations are consigned to operate, is legitimated by the seeming incorporation of Africans into the scheme. The results indicate that the touted generalisable corporate benefits of collective bargaining and workplace compensation are deficient because they perpetuate the colonial notion of privileging a few at the expense of the many. Therefore a process of restoring faith in and being guided by African philosophical paradigms for the fashioning of South African labour law is required.