Section 23(1)(d) of the Labour Relations Act, 1995
("LRA") enables an employer and a trade
union (or trade unions acting jointly), that enjoy majority support
in the employer's workplace, to conclude a collective agreement
and to extend the collective agreement to employees who are not
members of the trade union that concluded the collective agreement.
This extension can take place even if the employees are members of
another union that refused to conclude the collective agreement or
was not party to the collective bargaining process preceding its
conclusion.
This section provides utility to the employment relationship but
also impacts on the rights of the trade unions that are not party
to the collective agreement as well as the rights of their members.
The most important of these rights is the right to strike in that,
because they become bound by the collective agreement, they cannot
strike in respect of a matter regulated in that agreement. This
restriction on the
