The experiences of labour inspectors in their field of work

Abstract

There are experiences that labour inspectors undergo when doing their jobs. In Brazil, (Labour Inspectors: Killings 2005:1), the use of physical violence against labour inspectors led to armed federal police officer travelling with labour inspectors, after the murder of three labour inspectors in the Soya Plantation which was allegedly using illegal slave labourers. Rice (2006:26) pointed out that labour inspectors enforce the labour laws and related regulations and apply national standards and report to supervisors on problems and defects not covered by regulations. A qualitative study was used to collect data using one-on-one semi-structured interviews from 15 labour inspectors at 15 labour centres in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. The aim of the study was to explore and describe the experiences of labour inspectors in their field of work. The researcher read the informed consent form for the participants and they signed and permitted the researcher to use an audio recorder (see annexure B). The following experiences are identified and described: expectations of DOL when conducting an inspection, fulfillment, frustrations, frustration management, and challenges in the field of work, support systems and tools of trade. The limitation of this study was the collection of data. Geographically, Mpumalanga Province (South Africa) is big and it was time consuming and financially costly to access the inspectors. They also had tight schedules to allocate time for the research interviews.