Newcastle clothing factories back down in court battle

Twenty-four Chinese-owned manufacturers have agreed that they cannot claim an 18-month compliance amnesty or bar bargaining council inspectors from their factories. Illustration: Bronwyn Webb

• Twenty-four clothing manufacturers have agreed to an order in the Durban Labour Court confirming that the Department of Employment and Labour cannot exempt them from complying with labour law.
• But the companies say it is unclear which bargaining council has jurisdiction over their businesses.
• The council says several of the factories had refused its inspectors access, claiming a labour department pilot project protected them for 18 months. The manufacturers deny refusing access.

Twenty-four Chinese-owned clothing manufacturers in Newcastle have agreed, effectively, that they have no labour law “amnesty” and cannot keep the clothing bargaining council’s inspectors out of their factories.

However, according to the order granted by Durban Labour Court Acting Judge Sean Snyman, they can still “challenge” whether they fall under the jurisdiction of the National Bargaining Council for the Clothing Manufacturing Industry and are bound by its collective agreement on wages and working conditions.

Last week, the Minister of Employment and Labour agreed to an order that the department could not lawfully grant any labour law compliance grace period to about 31 factories, labelled the G31, some of which the council alleges are “sweatshops”.

The bargaining council initiated the urgent court action after it became aware of a departmental pilot project aimed at educating the Chinese-owned manufacturers on labour laws and their statutory obligations.

The council said that in recent months, several factories had refused its inspectors access, claiming that they were protected for 18 months under the project.

In its court papers, the council argued that the government had no right to interfere with its work and only the council could force or excuse compliance with its main collective agreement.

It wanted an order binding the companies to the collective bargaining agreement.

The cited manufacturers initially indicated that they would oppose the application and late last week filed a supplementary affidavit, claiming there was no clarity over which of the bargaining councils had jurisdiction over them.

They also denied that they refused access to inspectors.

Xiangxiang Zheng, director of Mountain Spring Trading and Clothing (Pty) Ltd, said the project had been initiated by the factory owners who, being of Chinese descent, were unfamiliar with South African labour law and whose primary language “is not English”.

He said the owners “found themselves in an invidious position” where their operations straddled the scope of different bargaining councils within the clothing and textile industry.

He said some of those included the National Textile Bargaining Council, the Bargaining Council for the Leather Industry and the Bargaining Council for the Laundry, Cleaning and Dyeing Industry.

The project, Zheng said, was aimed at allowing proper profiling and classification to achieve compliance within the broader textile sector.

He accused the council of attempting to “force compliance”, before the council’s jurisdiction had been confirmed and before a clear, logical and transparent joint inspection, involving all bargaining councils, had been conducted.

The council’s attorney Richard Erasmus confirmed on Monday that the matter had been settled over the weekend with 24 of 25 of the cited manufacturers.

One was excluded; it had not been properly served because it was no longer trading at its registered address.

The minister, who remained the first respondent in Monday’s proceedings, did not oppose the application and consented to the order.

Each party was ordered to pay their own costs.

The council still has pending cases against two design houses – Drake Clothing and Gemelli – which it accuses of contracting “unlawful sweatshops and sham co-operatives” to supply major South African retailers. It wants the design houses closed. Both have strongly denied any wrongdoing.

These applications, which are pending before the Pietermaritzburg High Court, will be set down for argument when all the papers have been filed.

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