- The Labour Court has decided that workers earning below a set amount cannot start unpaid salary cases in court.
- Judge Moshoana said the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) says these disputes must go to the CCMA, and the only legal place to decide them is arbitration.
- If you start your claim in the wrong place, your case can be dismissed, and you may have to pay legal costs, even if your claim is valid.
Many workers who do not get paid think they should go straight to court. But a recent decision by the Labour Court of South Africa shows that this can now fail before the court even looks at the facts.
The court made it clear that most lower-earning workers must start salary disputes at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), not in court.
This case involved Phineas Ralegogo and 74 other former municipal workers. They said the City of Tshwane hired them on short-term contracts, then did not give them work or pay their salaries, leave pay, or other benefits for months.
With no income, the group went straight to the Labour Court, saying the municipality broke their contracts. They did not first go to the CCMA. This choice led to their case being dismissed.
Judge GN Moshoana reminded everyone that a court must follow the law about what cases it can hear. "The Labour Court is a creature of a statute," he wrote. "Where a statute ousts the jurisdiction of the Labour Court, the Labour Court is not empowered to act."
What changed in the law
Before Section 73A of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, workers could often bring unpaid wage claims straight to court. But once Parliament made a special arbitration route for lower earners, that changed.
Judge Moshoana agreed that not paying salary is still about contracts, but said the Act limits what the court can do. The Labour Court only has power except "where this Act provides otherwise."
Section 73A is one of those exceptions. It says that if you earn below a certain amount, you must take disputes about unpaid salaries, leave pay and similar payments to the CCMA.
The judge rejected the idea that workers can pick where to take their claims. He said if you are within the threshold and want to claim, the only legislated forum to deal with that dispute is the CCMA.
No jurisdiction means no case
Because all the workers earned below the set amount, the court said it could not hear the case. Judge Moshoana said they were "excluded from approaching the Labour Court in order to resolve their dispute concerning the failure to pay salaries, leave pay and interest." The result was that "the application falls to be dismissed for the want of jurisdiction."
He warned that when a court acts without power, any order it makes is pointless. Brutum fulmen means a legal thunderbolt with no force. Even a good claim will fail if started in the wrong place.
Why the CCMA comes first
Lawmakers changed the law to help workers. The CCMA is meant to be faster, cheaper and less formal than court, making it easier for lower-paid workers to get justice without big legal bills. CCMA arbitration can give binding results more quickly than a court trial.
In this case, the workers not only went to the wrong place, but also used a way of filing their case that was not suited to disputes about the facts. Judge Moshoana said motion proceedings do not work if there are real disagreements about what happened, and called their legal papers "shoddily drafted." Mistakes like this can ruin a case.
The human cost of getting it wrong
The judge felt sorry for the workers. He said they seemed to be "the victims of remarkable ineptitude," and if they had gone to the CCMA, "the poor former employees may have received justice swiftly."
But sympathy could not fix the mistake. The case was dismissed, and the workers were ordered to pay costs.
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