LAW’S DYNAMIC EFFECTS: THE CASE OF THE NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN DOMESTIC WORK SECTOR

This thesis investigates Lee and McCann’s Institutional Dynamism (ID) model through a qualitative micro-study of South Africa’s National Minimum Wage Act 9 of 2018 (NMWA) in the domestic work sector. It examines the pathways and impediments to the Act’s dynamic effects and develops a bespoke ID model designed to enhance regulatory effectiveness in domestic work settings. The study employs doctrinal and socio-legal methods, drawing on qualitative interviews and focus-group data.

The findings reveal that the NMWA’s external dynamism was weak. Informal normative systems hold greater legitimacy than statutory norms, thereby limiting the Act’s influence through normative divergence and radical disassociation. The dominance of informal wage norms is attributed to the Act’s rate, which was set at a level too low to meaningfully influence wage setting practices. This conclusion supports the finding that most domestic workers received wages at or above the statutory minimum despite widespread unawareness of the NMWA, suggesting that prevailing informal wage norms already exceeded the statutory floor, rendering the Act normatively irrelevant in practice. The displacement by informal norms is further compounded by the formalist and universalist design of the NMWA which fails to resonate with the relational and affective nature of domestic work relationships.

Notwithstanding these impediments, the study identifies several pathways and regulatory conduits through which dynamic effects can be facilitated. These include the translation and contextualisation of the NMWA by unions, non-governmental organisations, and community intermediaries; normative convergence and legal observance achieved through awareness campaigns and community dialogues; regulatory socialisation (in which employers and domestic workers internalise wage norms via peer networks and moral persuasion); and the strengthening of the normative agency of domestic workers, who actively negotiate and reinterpret wage standards within domestic work settings.

The bespoke ID model for domestic work reconceptualises institutional dynamism as a relational, multi-layered, and iterative process shaped by the interaction between formal standards and informal normative orders. It highlights four interlinked processes (normative convergence, normative signalling, regulatory socialisation, and normative agency) through which regulatory effectiveness can be strengthened. By acknowledging normative divergence as structural and by promoting participatory, gradual, and context-sensitive normative alignment, this thesis advances a refined ID model for embedding formal labour standards within informal work settings.