CCMA ANNUAL REPORT

Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration Annual Report 2022/23

2.2. ORGANISATIONAL ENVIRONMENT The CCMA’s budget is no longer sufficient to adequately deliver on its statutory mandate. This resulted in a reduced allocation of days to part-time Commissioners which negatively impacted turnaround times and implementation of a range of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) projects such as infrastructure refresh and Wi-Fi rollout to CCMA provincial offices. The CCMA started the journey of moving its systems into cloud as part of the remediation against aging ICT infrastructure guided by government’s Cloud First undertaking. This has allowed the CCMA to replace servers that had reached their end of life while not having to forego huge upfront capital expenditure and still ensuring that critical systems are housed in state-of-the-art infrastructure. This development has remedied the increased risk of system outages as a result of unsupported infrastructure which could have negatively impacted service delivery. The work of digitising the whole value chain of case disbursement has begun in earnest, preparing the organisation to move to a digital case file to replace the current paper-based file.

2.3. KEY POLICY DEVELOPMENTS AND LEGISLATIVE CHANGES 2.3.1. NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE ACT, 2018 (ACT NO. 9 OF 2018) (NMWA)

In accordance with the requirements of Section 6(5) of the Act, the Minister published the adjusted National Minimum Wage (NMW) rates in Government Gazette No. 3069 on 21 February 2023, increasing the rates in excess of the National Minimum Wage Commission’s recommendation, as follows:

The NMW increased from R23.19 to R25.42 for each ordinary hour worked.

A

Farm workers are now entitled to R25.42 per hour.

B

Domestic worker rates have been equalised after a progressive equalisation period with domestic workers now entitled to R25.42 per hour, increasing from an hourly rate of R23.19.

C

Workers employed on an expanded public works programme are entitled to R13.97 per hour, increasing from an hourly rate of R12.75.

D

FIGURE 7: NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE RATES Schedule 2 of the Act, which pertains to the minimum learnership allowance for workers who have concluded learnership agreements contemplated in Section 17 of the Skills Development Act, 1998 (Act No. 97 of 1998) (SDA), has been amended. The minimum weekly allowance for a learner is entitled to be based on the National Qualification Framework (NFQ) level of the learner and these allowances have now been increased and will therefore impact the cost of learnership agreements. The BCEA annual earnings threshold increased from an amount of R224 080.48 to R241 110.59 per annum. The earnings threshold will impact on the application of provisions of the BCEA (1997), LRA (1995, as amended) and the EEA (1998).

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