In 1995 and following a lengthy strike by baseball players President Clinton famously threatened to introduce a Bill (no pun intended) into Congress to effectively declare baseball an essential service in the United States of America and settle the dispute. See below for the link to the ‘Letter from America’ by Alastair Cooke in February 1995. That threat eventually persuaded the players and owners to get back to the bargaining table. It is unlikely that South Africa’s President has the same power to make a similar threat regarding teachers and prevent them from striking.
Link to BBC Radio 4
BBC podcast – Alastair Cooke
Links to Business Day
‘No chance’ of ban on teachers’ strikes – 7.02.2013 – Carol Paton
THE African National Congress’s (ANC’s) proposal that education be declared “an essential service” has no prospect of succeeding, according to experts.
It will be illegal in terms of the Labour Relations Act and unworkable even if allowed, based on the total failure to enforce essential services provisions in other sectors.
The ANC will have to go back to the drawing board in its attempts to regulate teachers. It has no option other than to continue the protracted negotiations of recent years with teacher trade unions to modify their behaviour by agreement.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions and two of its public service affiliates, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) and the National Education and Health Workers Union, have shot down the ANC proposal. They took cover under the Labour Relations Act, which defines essential services as those “the interruption of which would endanger the life, personal safety or health of a whole of part of the population”.
This definition is based on that of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), whose conventions the government endorses. The ILO has ruled that education is not included in this definition.
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has refined his comments to say what the party was really seeking was an “attitudinal” change among teachers.
The focus on essential services has highlighted the failure of the provisions of the Labour Relations Act so far to regulate strike activity. This is particularly the case in essential services.
The result has been that essential services workers — such as nurses, doctors, some municipal workers, and employees essential to electricity generation and distribution — have in recent years gone on strike regardless of the law.
ANC vow on teaching as ‘essential service’ – 5.02.2013 Natasha Marrian
THE African National Congress (ANC) would “leave no stone unturned” in making education an essential service, the party’s secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, said on Monday.
This is not the first time the ANC has made the call, which in legal terms will prohibit teachers from going on strike, stripping them of a key bargaining tool.
The largest teachers’ union, the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), has rejected the proposal outright.
‘Essential service’ tag for teaching irks union – 16.01.2013 – Karl Gernetsky & Natasha Marrian
DECLARING education an essential service would be in conflict with the constitution and international best practice, the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) said Tuesday.
The union’s comments followed remarks by African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, who said Tuesday education as an essential service was something the ANC “feels strongly about”, and that even if education was not legally declared an essential service, it should be treated as such.
“Education … is something that we should not gamble with, because it is about the future of our children,” Mr Mantashe said after the party’s first national executive committee meeting Tuesday.
Links to Canadian websites re possibility of declaring hockey an essential service
Unions slammed over essential services: Health officials list failures – 30.11.2012
Schatz was particularly critical of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses for its 1999 strike, when SUN defied a court order to return to work, but added other stoppages have left some health boards with either no plan at all or only a phone number for a union leader.
Asked about incidents since the passage of the essential services law when – as the hearing heard Wednesday – 124 of 125 workers in one hospital laundry were designated as essential, Schatz conceded there have been mistakes by health region managers learning how the new law works.
Legislate NHL hockey as an ‘essential service’ – 8.12.2012
Then, for the good of the country’s economy, let alone its sanity, perhaps it’s worth a shot to legislate hockey as a “national essential service.”
Should Hockey Be Deemed an Essential Service? – 26.08.2012 Ian Esplan
Today I’d like to ask the question, should hockey be deemed an essential service for Canadians?
Over past few years we have seen the both Canada Post and Air Canada legislated back to work by the Harper government because they were deemed an essential service. Today I will argue that hockey is just as important to Canada as mail and airplanes.
With Canada Post, it was decided that every Canadian should be able to have mail delivered in a timely manner (although, when has Canada Post ever been timely? I swear it takes two weeks sometimes to get a letter across town). While they did have rotating strikes, the government would not allow those to go on for long. The mail eventually made it through.
The NHL should take notice with what has happened to Canada Post since the work stoppage. Canada Post has seen profit decrease dramatically since the stoppage. This decrease is mainly due to people finding other ways to have mail delivered. If there is another lockout, perhaps, hockey fans will discover the joy of spending their hard earned enjoyment money elsewhere.