THETO MAHLAKOANA: Woolworths workers get justice at last

Woolworths, one of SA’s premium retail brands, may pride itself in providing high-quality products and services to consumers, but the stink caused by its unfair retrenchment of workers will be hard to wash off. The Constitutional Court found last week that the company dismissed dozens of employees unfairly in 2012 and ordered that all 44 workers who were fired for not agreeing to have their contracts converted from permanent to flexitime be reinstated. Woolworths disregarded provisions in the Labour Relations Act that exist to protect workers from being fired arbitrarily. Its handling of the case is nothing short of shameful. In a high unemployment-rate labour market where every job matters, the company should not only have conducted the process more democratically, but was obliged to seek alternatives to retrenchment, as the apex court found. Woolworths’s intention was to convert much of its workforce to flexitime “in line with current market trends”. However, dealing with employee...