Tshwane approaches labour court in fight to not re-employ workers
“Based on the review process that we have embarked upon, the former contract workers cannot return to work until the Labour Court has fully ventilated the matter.”
The Tshwane metro is in a process to fight an order by the South African Local Government Bargaining Council (SALGBC) which ruled that the city reinstate workers and pay backdated salaries of about R115 000.
Tshwane metro spokesperson Selby Bokaba said the metro had begun a process to review the SALGBC’s ruling to reinstate the 89 so-called “capacity workers” at the Labour Court in Johannesburg.
“We believe that a different court would most likely arrive at a different outcome,” said Bokaba.
This follows the metro employing 627 workers to assist at waste management on a fixed 12-months contract from November 2019 until October 31, 2020.
According to Bokaba, “upon expiry of their contract, 89 of the workers demanded to be permanently absorbed as the city’s employees”.
“When the city insisted that they can’t be absorbed into the organisational structure as their contracts had expired, they took the matter to the SALGBC on the grounds of unfair dismissal, and on February 28, 2022, the council granted them an award that they be permanently employed.”
He said the metro strenuously disagreed with the ruling and decided to take the SALGBC’s ruling to a higher court.
Bokaba said the metro strongly believed that the labour court would deliver a favourable judgment to the city.
“Based on the review process that we have embarked upon, the former contract workers cannot return to work until the Labour Court has fully ventilated the matter,” he said.
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Former Tshwane employees who were dismissed unfairly according to the bargaining council, protested outside Tshwane House since 2021 and were set to return to work on Tuesday and receive backdated salaries of about R115 000.
The protestors had called on the metro to account for the alleged corruption and maladministration that led to 627 employees losing their jobs and being unable to claim UIF or South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) R350 grants.
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SALGBC commissioner Joseph Mphaphuli in ordering the metro to reinstate the former employees, said that the nature of the employees’ duties was not of a definite or limited duration.
“The former employees’ duties entailed cleaning the city of Tshwane. There is no end to cleaning the metro. A permanent job is one where there is no reason to expect that the job will come to an end.”
Mphaphuli said that jobs like cleaning would always be there and for this reason “there would be no justification for employing cleaners on contract for a limited duration”.
He said the former workers had every reason to harbour expectations for permanent employment as contemplated by the Labour relations act, due to the continuing nature of the job.
“The dismissals were unfair,” Mphaphuli said.
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