Abstract
The fundamental human rights of all South Africans, as entrenched in the Constitution of South Africa (1996), include freedom, human dignity, and equality. These fundamental rights also affect labour relations, as dealt with in section 23 of the Constitution. Over and above fair labour practices, the Constitution stipulates in section 24(a) that “everyone has the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being”. Literature shows that the level of employee well-being is directly connected to the fulfilment of their employer’s legal duties, including ensuring safe and healthy working conditions. Yet, despite the legal imperatives, some teachers still experience their workplaces as not conducive to their well-being.
The range of teacher workplaces in a particular high school can be extensive and can vary from normal classrooms to computer and science laboratories, art and music studios, gymnasiums, consumer study kitchens, sports fields, and technology workshops. The risks and hazards associated with each of these workplaces vary according to the specific activity or subject content requirements. This article limits its focus to the security of further education and training (hereafter FET) technology teachers. In technology workshops it is imperative that safety control measures be implemented effectively.
The purpose of safety control is to decrease or, ideally, eliminate a risk. Safety control in FET technology workshops is a legal duty that various stakeholders share. These stakeholders include the subject teacher, the head of the technology department (HOD) of the school, the school principal, the school management team, and authorities from different state departments. The research question this article deals with is how the most prominent stakeholders meet their respective legal duties to ensure teachers’ workplace security through the application of safety control measures. With this question leading the enquiry, the article firstly determined the legal and regulatory framework for safety measures, and the legal implications of non-compliance with these imperatives. Secondly, the level of success of the application of safety measures was determined, based on literature and a focused empirical enquiry, involving a number of educator participants closely involved in the practice of teaching in FET technology workshops.
The legal framework for workplace security is an extensive network that includes the Constitution, as mentioned, a number of relevant education-specific statutes, and a considerable array of regulations. The most notable common law principles are those of delictual liability, mostly related to the liability of the State as employer.
A literature search on the workplace security of teachers as well as technology education at secondary schools highlighted that in South Africa, research on technology education at high schools has been conducted to a lesser extent than internationally. Although the local researchers focused mainly on professional security and the teacher’s duty of care, none of them studied FET high school teachers’ workplace security. We therefore believe that this study could contribute to a deeper insight into the workplace security of FET technology high school teachers, resulting in an increased awareness of the responsibility of state departments, institutions and individuals to ensure such security.
This article reports on a qualitative, phenomenological study carried out to achieve the research objectives within the constructivist research paradigm. FET technology teachers (civil, mechanical, and electrical technology) from public high schools in the four districts of the North-West province formed the population. The schools under investigation are situated in both urban and rural areas and specialise in technical skills training. The study commenced after gaining permission from the relative authorities to conduct the empirical study. All ethical research requirements were adhered to. The purposive sampling method was employed to include those educators most knowledgeable about the topic under investigation and thus able to address the research question properly. On average six teachers per district were involved, but the exact number was in proportion to the size of the district. To understand the phenomenon under investigation fully, the researchers attempted to include schools from all four districts.
Open-ended questions for interviews were drafted to explore FET technology teachers’ perceptions of the application of safety control measures in technology facilities, and how it influenced the educators’ workplace security at their high schools. Schools were visited to conduct face-to-face, semi-structured interviews. Each interview was recorded, transcribed, and analysed. Each interview was coded separately, starting with a priori codes (pre-designed based on the interview questions) and identifying emerging codes from the raw data.
To ensure the reliability of the study, Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) reliability criteria model was used. Firstly, member checking was used to ensure credibility. Secondly, transferability as criterion was addressed by applying purposive sampling and providing a detailed description of the phenomenon, which enable readers to make decisions on how and whether findings can be transferred to their own contexts. The criterion of trustworthiness was met by including, inter alia, verbatim quotes from the participants in the analysis to corroborate the eventual findings. Confirmability as a fourth criterion was ensured by the researcher who acted as a research instrument by not allowing personal bias to compromise the study.
This article reports on one central theme from the wider study to ensure depth for the analysis. This led to a deeper understanding of how the most prominent stakeholders meet their respective legal duties to ensure teachers’ workplace security, through the application of safety control measures.
The research findings indicated that a number of distinct factors contributed to workplace insecurity amongst FET technology teachers, most notably that several key role players did not fulfil their professional responsibilities. In the case of movable infrastructure, this neglect had led to uninspected faulty machinery and non-compliance regarding certificates of compliance (COCs) of existing and newly acquired machinery. Furthermore, the implementation of health and safety regulations by tasked Department of Basic Education (DBE) officials to ensure safe workplaces was seriously lacking. Challenges regarding the supply of funding from school governing bodies and the DBE for maintenance of machinery and safeguarding of workplaces were also identified. Works inspectors refrained from scheduled inspections of machinery, immovable school infrastructure like classrooms constructed from asbestos-containing materials, and buildings damaged by earthquakes.
This article further highlighted that sufficient legal determinants exist to regulate the workplace security of FET technology teachers. However, the effective implementation of these legal determinants is lacking. The single biggest factor contributing to workplace insecurity in this study was undoubtedly the relative absence of relevant works inspectors and record-keeping as per regulations. Every sphere of workplace security is influenced by such absence, departmental officials’ non-adherence to the Guidelines for General Upkeep and Maintenance of Education Facilities, 2018 (GU&M Guidelines), non-compliant service providers, and some school governing bodies (SGBs) that do not fulfil their legal duties.
For workplaces to be safe and free of hazards, it is imperative that officials conduct continual risk assessments to implement effective solutions. In the light of inadequate inspections by works inspectors, the school management teams and SGBs are legally bound to play a leading role in ensuring that workplace security is a priority in their schools. These bodies also have to ensure that sufficient funding is available for maintenance of machinery, the purchase of specialised personal protective equipment, and that workplaces are safe through proper financial management of school funds. SGBs should acquire the services of professional service providers and an approved inspection authority (AIA) to ensure that all regulations in the Occupational Health and Safety Act 130 of 1993 (OHSA) are adhered to. This is especially important where claims are made and proof of adherence to OHSA regulations is required in cases of occupational injuries, diseases or other forms of harm to teachers or learners.
It is recommended that the DBE establishes a system specifically for technology teachers to be medically surveyed annually for diseases associated with their work environments as listed in the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act 130 of 1993 (COIDA). Such health assessments or medical surveillance processes would assist with the early detection of occupational diseases like hearing loss or lung diseases that may be caused by hazardous work environments in FET technology workshops. The system would also ensure that medical records of employees are recorded for potential claims for compensation under the COIDA.
Some teachers were uninformed about common-law principles relating to delictual liability. The ramifications attached to such ignorance and the role of school authorities to increase knowledge amongst teachers should be further investigated. Lack of workplace security due to hazardous workplace conditions and infrastructure, lack of support from SGBs, and uncommunicative subject advisory services, had a detrimental effect on the educational practices and morale of the teachers who participated in the study. There is an urgent need for key role players responsible for workplace security to be held accountable by education authorities in cases of non-compliance with legislation and regulations.
Due to schools being affected by the sudden and unforeseen outbreak of infections associated with the period during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, several appointments with schools had to be rescheduled, which caused some disruption in the data generation programme. Travel restrictions prevented adding a comparative international or even interprovincial component to the empirical research. The volume of data generated in the specific province in South Africa was, however, more than adequate to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon.
This study showed that future research could be conducted by involving more FET technology high schools in South Africa, also from other provinces, in order to gain a deeper and wider understanding of the phenomenon. From a psychological point of view, occupational stress of FET technology teachers in the South African context may be studied to identify and manage the specific factors that contribute to psychological insecurities of FET technology teachers. With regard to infrastructure, an international comparative study could be made of earthquake policies and school regulations in countries with high seismic activity, as well as countries with similar challenges regarding the use of asbestos or asbestos-containing materials in education facilities, potentially leading to diseases such as asbestosis amongst teachers.
Keywords: delictual liability; FET technology teachers; high school workshops; labour relations; occupational injuries and illnesses; physical infrastructure; safety controls; teacher security; workplace security
- This article’s featured image was created by Blaz Erzetic and obtained from Unsplash.