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This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

1981. Labour Relations Amendment Act No 57

This "abolished all racial distinctions with regard to union membership, and permitted the formation of mixed trade unions, but obliged even unregistered unions to open their premises, their accounts and their membership lists to the Registrar for inspection. Strict rules were also laid down to prevent any direct association or financial links between political parties and trade unions, whether registered or not, and to ban financial assistance to members of unregistered unions if they went out on strike" (Davenport 1987: 443).

Together with the INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION AMENDMENT ACT of 1979 it "made it possible for blacks to participate in the legal machinery set up for collective bargaining" (Dyzenhaus 1991: 47, note 35).

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. Return to theThis resource is hosted by the site.