What is a labour broker? (You can't hurry law)

In January 2015, a set of laws regulating labour brokers and labour broker workers came into effect.

One of the main features of that law was that after three months, the labour broker fell away as the employer, and its client who ran the actual business became the workers' employer - the client became the entity workers could ask for a raise, could strike against and could take to the CCMA or labour court if they were unfairly dismissed.

In 2018, the Constitutional Court said that when the labour broker fell away, it fell away completely, and could only stay on to do payroll and other administration, but not to run workers' lives.

The problem is that no-one had actually decided what a labour broker truly was, and so the lawyers, including casual lawyers, are back in court to argue about this.

Casual lawyers represent 201 workers who claim that a company engaging our clients is actually a labour broker - or as the law calls it, a 'temporary employment service'. The company is saying it provides other services, not purely employment services.

The workers won their case in the CCMA in 2015, then lost in the Labour Court in 2019. We will be in the Labour Appeal Court in September.

The papers in the case are on this site, in our work-in-progress litigation page: https://cwaolawcentre.wixsite.com/website/what-is-a-labour-broker

It may need work, but at least we didn't take as long to set it up as our litigation takes.