CHAPTER 8—WAGE REGULATION IN SOUTH
AFRICA

Development and Coverage

HE Union of South Africa has since 1918 followed the example
set 30 years ago by Australia and later by Great Britain. An
act was passed in 1918 providing for the establishment of wage
boards to regulate wages of women and minors in certain trades.
The Minister of Labor was authorized to establish the boards, each
tomposed of representatives of employers and employees in equal
Numbers, under an impartial chairman, such representatives to be
chosen in consultation with employers’ and employees’ organizations.
Twenty-one boards were functioning in 1923. The application of the
law, however, encountered several difficulties? The representatives
broposed by the employees were frequently unsatisfactory. Employers
 discriminated against employees chosen as members of the
boards. In 1925, there were only 14 wage boards in existence.! An
industrial conciliation act was passed in 1924 for organized trades to
facilitate agreements between employers and employees and the settleent
 of disputes.®* As a counterpart for unorganized or less organzed
 trades, an act for the legal fixation of minimum wages was passed
by the Union Parliament in 1925 called the “wage act 1925,” to supplement
 the law of 1918 for women and minors.?
Agricultural and forestry workers, domestic servants, and railway
employees are exempted from the law, and also employers and empbloyees
 covered by collective agreements or awards under the abovementioned
 industrial conciliation act, on condition that the wages
fixed by these agreements or awards are at least equal to the mini-Mum
 wage to be fixed under the wage act for the same trade and
area. (Art. 1.) By this last provision preference is given to collective
 bargaining over legal fixation of minimum wages.

Machinery of Wage Fixing and Enforcement

THE Governor General is empowered to appoint a wage board
of three members, which for specific Investigations may be enlarged
 by two more members—representatives of employers and of
employees. (Wage act 1925, art. 2.)
Either the Minister of Labor, trade-unions, employers’ associations,
Or, in case no registered employees’ or employers’ association exists,
&amp; number of employees or of employers deemed by the board to be
* Union of South Africa. Office of Census and Statistics. Official Year Book of the
Union, 1925. Pretoria 1927, EB 241, ) :
® Union of South Africa. epartment of Labor. The South African Labor Gazette,
Pretoria, October, 1925, p, 189.
* Union of South Africa. Department of Labor. The Social and Industrial Review,
November, 1927, p. 896; “ Principles of industrial legislation,” by A, T. Roberts. ©