In a big blow to labour brokers the Labour Court on appeal ruled on the 10 July that labour brokerage workers are entitled to become full employees after three months (NUMSA v Assign Services and Others (JA96/15) [2017] ZALAC 45 (10 July)).
This ruling was contrary to a previous ruling which deemed the employees to be in dual employment between the labour broker and employer.
The net impact of the ruling is to place all of the risk on the employer in relation to engaging labour broker workers. While there should previously have been no practical cost advantage of engaging labour broker workers, the practice may have been justified on the basis the employer was not able to manage the workers effectively. This may still be the case but the employer is now running a massive risk that a third party is effectively in charge of their obligations without any recourse.