A precedent from 2018 led to a change in the labour law – now, workers on temporary contracts can demand permanent positions with better wages and greater legal certainty. An example of the impact of this is the case of employees at a Ferrero SA chocolate factory; until 2018, 257 of the 354 workers were employed on temporary contracts, some of them for a period of up to ten years. Following the court ruling, the workers obtained a permanent employment contract.

Despite these successes, the labour dispute continues. This is because many of the new contracts are “zero-hour contracts” that do not guarantee a sufficient income. The companies are focussing primarily on the workers’ managers and are trying to discourage them with all kinds of harassment. CWAO inspires numerous other legal advice centres throughout South Africa. Thanks to an electronic handbook with the most important labour law provisions and judgements, workers throughout the country can benefit from CWAO’s knowledge. Radio programmes on labour rights, which are broadcast on community radios, inform people about their rights. There are also plans to broadcast these radio programmes in other countries in Southern Africa as part of the Southern African Regional Network (SARN).

In this film, casualised women workers speak about sexual harassment by labour brokers, being made to share personal protective equipment (PPE), being forced to buy lunch for supervisors in order to get overtime. The women workers tell of how they came together as the Simunye Women Workers Forum with the support of the CWAO, to fight for their legal right to be made permanent at work.