Description
The main objective of this study is to evaluate the role of bargaining councils in wage formation in the South African labour market. Specifically, the study aims to determine what premium is associated with Bargaining Council membership as distinct from Union
membership, for employees in the South African labour market.
Section 2 provides a brief overview of the development of institutionalised wage formation in the South African labour market, focusing on the establishment of industrial councils, the
development of a dual system of industrial relations in the country and the shift from industrial councils to bargaining councils in post-apartheid South Africa. Different forms of wage formation are then explored in Section 3. The various data sources used in our analysis and the estimation of industrial and bargaining council coverage are discussed in the Section 4.1,1 See Michaud & Vencatachellum (2001: 20) for a comparison of some of the reported wage premia in the literature. 2 while Section 4.2 provides a descriptive overview of the estimated coverage in terms of the numbers of workers as well as their associated earnings. Section 5 provides a multivariate
analysis of earnings, which allows us to account for the simultaneous impact of a range of relevant variables on earnings, in particular, isolating the impact of industrial/bargaining council and union membership on earnings. Section 6 concludes.
