Welcome to The Forum SA. As a visitor you have read only access to the public content areas of this website. You will have to register as a member to access all content, post messages and network with our members. Membership is free and registering is quick and easy. You can click here to register now and become a member within minutes.
Akchewly this is yet another little piece of trickery in the electrical contracting industry.
You are perfectly entitled to set up or use an alternative retirement funding scheme and apply for an exemption. Unfortunately the NBCEI has historically always refused to grant an exemption, claiming the benefits of the alternative tendered is not as favorable to employees as those of the bargaining council's schemes.
This may well be questionable, but tough to prove (either way, really) and there are very few situations where it is worth the cost of challenging the NBCEI rulings in court.
This is a little more complex when it comes to the electrical conracting industry. Some years ago I discovered a flaw in the main agreement - I wonder if it's been patched since.
Need to check, but at the time the main agreement only listed the funds - it didn't contain a clause stating that pension (or in some areas provident) fund contributions had to be made.
There are two other areas where the requirement may not apply - territories not covered by the main agreement (yes, they do exist), and non-parties if the collective agreement isn't extended to non-parties by the Minister of Labour (which I'm trying to establish if is currently the case). The last gazetted notice (an extension) expired on 31st December 2011.
Bottom line is if you are a registered contractor they have to belong to the bargaining council unless you have a private one, however if the already belong to it there's not much you can do. The reason I'm saying this is because that's what I do, I do a lot of pension/provident funds and I can tell you there are many, many companies out there that would prefer private funds because the bargaining council are useless, members always struggle when it comes to aministration and payments, I've even had cases where they had underpaid members. In November I did the whole exercise to get all the necessary documentation to move a logistics company's drivers to a private fund which in itself is a huge task and just to give you an idea, every member has to sign that he/she agrees to move to a private fund (imagine 600 people have to agree) in any case I managed to get all the paperwork in place and submitted it. A few days later I got a call from the MD of the company to cancel the whole process because they have been threatened with their lives.
If you like pm me your details so we can discuss at lenght different options, there's no point to talk general stuff when we don't know the exact details.
By the way I forgot to mention that government is working on making the pension/provident funds compolsory, they talking of the next 2-3 years, so its a good idea to prepare in advance and implement something like that when you doing annual salary increases so that the company can feel it as little as possible.
We process personal data about users of our site, through the use of cookies and other technologies, to deliver our services, personalize advertising, and to analyze site activity. We may share certain information about our users with our advertising and analytics partners. For additional details, refer to our Privacy Policy.
By clicking "I AGREE" below, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our personal data processing and cookie practices as described therein. You also acknowledge that this forum may be hosted outside your country and you consent to the collection, storage, and processing of your data in the country where this forum is hosted.
Tweet
Comment