8 October 2026 by ASC Team
You have a letter, a vest and a name on the notice board. What you do not have, on most South African sites, is anyone who has told you what the letter lets you do. Section 18 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993 gives a health and safety representative a list of functions and a list of entitlements, section 17(7) says your training happens in working hours and counts as time worked, section 18(3) requires the employer to give you the facilities, assistance and training you reasonably require and that have been agreed, and section 26 and section 18(4) stand behind you. This guide is a plan for the first four weeks: what to read, what to ask for, the first inspection, the first report and the first committee meeting, set on the packing hall of a ready meals plant.
Week one: read the sections and find the agreement
Start with the Act, which General Administrative Regulation 4 requires your employer to keep readily available at the workplace if it has five or more employees. Ask where it is; the answer tells you something. Read sections 17 to 20 and section 26. It takes twenty minutes.
Section 17(1) says you were designated in writing for a specified period. Find your letter and read the period. Section 17(4) says only full time employees acquainted with the conditions and activities at the workplace may be designated, which is why you and not a consultant. Section 17(5) sets the numbers: at least one representative for every 50 employees or part of 50 in a factory, one per 100 in shops and offices. Count your site, including the agency workers, who are the site’s employees for the Act because it excludes a labour broker from the definition of employer, and see whether every area and shift is covered.
Then ask for the agreement. General Administrative Regulation 6 requires the employer, before designating representatives, to negotiate an agreement with the registered trade unions, or to consult all employee representatives where there is no union, covering how representatives are nominated or elected, their term, how they may be removed, how vacancies are filled, how they perform their functions, and the facilities, training and assistance under section 18(3). Regulation 7 requires designation to be in accordance with that agreement. If nobody can find it, that is your first item for the committee. If it exists, it tells you what training you are owed.
Week two: learn what section 18 lets you do
| Section 18(1): you may | What that means on your floor |
|---|---|
| Review the effectiveness of health and safety measures | Ask whether the control works, not only whether it exists. Is the hearing protection worn at the flow wrappers, or issued and in a locker? |
| Identify potential hazards and major incidents | Walk, look, listen, and write down what could hurt someone before it does |
| Examine the causes of incidents together with the employer | When someone in your area is hurt, you are part of the investigation, not a witness to it |
| Investigate employee complaints | When a worker tells you the eyewash is always empty, that is yours to look into |
| Make representations to the employer, the committee or, failing that, an inspector | Put it in writing to the supervisor; take it to the committee; and if nothing moves, the Act gives you a route to the inspector |
| Inspect the workplace at intervals agreed with the employer, after reasonable notice | Agree the interval and the notice now, in writing, so that nobody can say later that you were not allowed on the floor |
| Take part in consultations with inspectors and accompany them on inspections | When the inspector comes, you walk with her. Section 13(b) requires the employer to tell you beforehand of a notified inspection |
| Attend committee meetings | Every representative at the workplace is a member of the committee, or of one of them, under section 19(2) |
Section 18(2) adds what you are entitled to: to visit the site of an incident at all reasonable times and attend any inspection on site; to attend any investigation or formal inquiry under the Act; to inspect any document the employer must keep under the Act, where reasonably necessary for the role; to accompany an inspector on any inspection; with the employer’s approval, which may not be unreasonably withheld, to bring a technical adviser; and to take part in any internal health or safety audit. Section 18(3) requires the employer to provide the facilities, assistance and training you may reasonably require and that have been agreed upon. Section 18(4) says you incur no civil liability merely because you failed to do something you may or must do under the Act: the employer’s duties stay with the employer.
Week three: the first inspection and the first report
Mzansi Fresh Meals is the case site in ASC’s courses: a chilled ready meals plant in Kempton Park with 400 people on two shifts and 60 agency workers, a training scenario built from real audit, inspection and incident patterns. No real company is named. In the case, a line leader on the packing hall, Thabo Radebe, is designated in the first week of a month and walks the hall in the third, with a checklist he built from the Act and the regulations.
He finds three things. At the flow wrappers, where the 2024 survey measured 86 dB(A), half the packers have their hearing protection round their necks, and nobody has had a hearing test since the survey. The Noise Exposure Regulations, 2024 set out, by heading, a noise exposure risk assessment, monitoring, medical screening and surveillance, noise zones and hearing protective devices, and lesson 3.4 of the course takes a representative through what to look for; his finding is that the control exists and is not working. At the sleeve applicator on line 2, the guard the inspector required in May is in place, but the hygiene team clears jams at night with the drive still live, because the padlocks for lockout are shared and usually in the day shift’s drawer; General Machinery Regulation 6(2) requires controls to be made inoperative by positive means during repairs. And the first aid notice by the hall door, which General Safety Regulation 3(6) requires to show where the box is kept and the name of the person in charge, names a first aider who left in 2025.
He writes three reports. Each says where, when, what he saw, which regulation it touches, who he told, and the date he expects an answer. He gives them to the production manager and keeps copies. He tells the packers he spoke to what he wrote, in Sesotho, because that is what they speak. That is section 18(1) in practice: identify, make representations, and record it.
Week four: the first committee meeting
Section 19(1) requires the employer to establish a committee where two or more representatives are designated, and to consult it on initiating, developing, promoting, maintaining and reviewing measures for health and safety. Section 19(4) requires it to meet as often as necessary and at least once every three months. At Mzansi the committee last met in February, so Thabo’s first act as a member is to ask, in writing, when the next meeting is. Section 19(4) also provides for a meeting on the written request of more than 10 percent of the employees concerned, which is worth knowing if the answer is silence.
At the meeting, three things matter. First, the item: one finding, stated as a recommendation the committee can make to the employer under section 20(1)(a), with the regulation named. Not “noise in the packing hall” but “the committee recommends that audiometry be arranged for the packing hall and that the hearing protection use be checked on both shifts by the end of November”. Second, the record: section 20(2) requires the committee to keep a record of each recommendation it makes to the employer, and General Administrative Regulation 5 requires the employer to keep those records for at least three years and to provide a suitable meeting place. If the minutes do not show the recommendation, it was not made. Third, the follow up: a recommendation that is not answered at the next meeting is raised again, and section 20(1) allows the committee, if a matter is not resolved with the employer, to take it to an inspector.
The committee must also discuss any incident at the workplace in which a person was injured, became ill or died, and General Administrative Regulation 9(4) requires the employer to have the committee examine every Annexure 1 incident record at its next meeting. A representative who asks for the register at every meeting is doing what the regulation expects.
What protects you while you do this?
Section 26(1): an employer may not dismiss you, reduce your pay or change your terms or position to your disadvantage because you gave information required under the Act, complied with an inspector, gave evidence, did anything you may or must do under the Act, or refused to do what the Act prohibits. Everything in sections 18 and 20 is something you may do under the Act. Section 18(4) adds that you incur no civil liability for failing to do something you may or must do as a representative. And section 17(7): your designation, your functions and your training happen in ordinary working hours and count as time worked. A representative who is told to inspect in his lunch break can point to the section.
What the Act does not give you is an express right to stop the line or to refuse dangerous work; that is in the Mine Health and Safety Act and applies only on mines. What it gives you is the representation, the escalation to the committee and then the inspector, and the inspector’s power under section 30 to prohibit. On an ISO 45001 site, clause 7.3 f) requires the organisation to set up the ability of workers to remove themselves from imminent and serious danger, and clause 5.4 makes you part of how the system consults and involves workers.
Frequently asked questions
How long is a representative designated for?
For the period specified in the written designation under section 17(1), set in the agreement under General Administrative Regulation 6. There is no fixed term in the Act. Read your letter.
Can an agency worker be a representative?
Section 17(4) requires a representative to be employed in a full-time capacity at the workplace and acquainted with its conditions and activities. Because the Act excludes a labour broker from the definition of employer, an agency worker who works full time at the site under its direction is the site’s employee for the Act and can be eligible. Lesson 1.1 of the course works through it for the Mzansi night shift.
What training am I owed?
Section 18(3): the facilities, assistance and training you may reasonably require and that have been agreed upon, with the agreement under General Administrative Regulation 6 setting it out. Section 17(7) puts the training in working hours.
Can I inspect whenever I want?
Section 18(1) says at intervals agreed with the employer and after reasonable notice. Agree the interval and the notice in writing. Section 18(2) separately entitles you to visit the site of an incident at all reasonable times.
What if the employer ignores my representations?
Take them to the committee, which records its recommendations under section 20(2). If the matter is not resolved with the employer, section 18(1) and section 20(1) both allow it to go to an inspector.
Am I responsible if someone in my area is hurt?
No. Section 18(4) says you incur no civil liability merely because you failed to do something you may or must do under the Act. The employer’s duties under sections 8 and 9 are the employer’s.
Which ASC course trains the representative?
This guide is drawn from Health and Safety Representative, FS66, a course for newly designated and existing representatives, committee members, and the supervisors and SHEQ officers who support them.
R895, prices in rand with no VAT added. About 5 hours, self paced, lifetime access.
- Sections 17 and 18, the General Administrative Regulations agreement, your protection, and sections 19 and 20 on the committee.
- Walking your area, reporting hazards and chasing the answer, examining incidents with the employer, the committee meeting, and talking to workers in the site’s languages.
- A workshop on the Mzansi packing hall in the Representative’s Inspection and Report tool: one inspection, one hazard report, one committee item.
- Three knowledge checks, three games, six scenario checks, three case study assessments and a final, all at 70 percent.
Enrol now and do the job the Act describes. All eight courses and the free guides sit at ISO 45001 and health and safety training. For a team of representatives, ask about a group arrangement on WhatsApp ASC.
Related guides: What the committee may ask the employer, and what the employer must do and Why the near miss you did not report matters.
Sources
- Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993, sections 1, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 26 and 30, SAFLII consolidated text, saflii.org
- General Administrative Regulations, 2003, regulations 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9, saflii.org
- General Safety Regulations, 1986, regulation 3; General Machinery Regulations, 1988, regulation 6; Noise Exposure Regulations, 2024, Government Gazette 52226, 6 March 2025
- Mine Health and Safety Act 29 of 1996, section 23
- ISO 45001:2018, Occupational health and safety management systems: Requirements with guidance for use (ISO), clauses 5.4 and 7.3
This guide is training, not legal advice. ISO 45001 is copyright and is not reproduced here. ASC is not affiliated with ISO. Last updated 8 October 2026.