Metro heads to labour court in bid not to pay employees’ wage increase
Earlier this month, the South African Local Government Bargaining Council dismissed the metro’s application to be exempted from paying the employees’ wage increases.
The Tshwane metro said it would fight an order by the South African Local Government Bargaining Council (SALGBC) to pay municipal employees a 3.5% salary increase in the labour court.
The order would entail an estimated R430-million salary increase for employees.
Earlier this month, the bargaining council dismissed the metro’s application to be exempted from paying the wage increase following an agreement signed by the municipality and worker’s union in September 2021.
Briefing the media at the State of the Capital Address on Thursday, mayor Randall Williams said the metro would approach the labour court to review the issue.
“We are going to go that route to resolve this matter as quickly as possible,” Williams said.
The union was not yet served with court papers indicating the labour court review, said South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) regional secretary Mpho Tladinyane on Monday.
“The metro is not acting in good faith, undermining collective bargaining. It deliberately wants to deny municipal workers their salary and wage increases,” Samwu said in a statement.
“We call on the metro to implement the salary increase to alleviate hardships faced by its employees who have been waiting for eight months for their salary increases.
“The time has come for the metro to show that it indeed cares for the well-being of its employees and most importantly, sound labour relations in the city by implementing the agreement as signed in the bargaining council.”
Last week, the bargaining council did not make a ruling on the metro’s appeal application on the dismissed exemption.
It said that in the initial application, the appeal was not applied for and no panel was appointed for the appeal.
“It must be noted that the parties to the salary and wage collective agreement agreed and approved a prescribed exemption form that an applicant must use. The executive committee further appointed the exemptions panel and the panel of financial experts.
“There is no appeal panel for obvious reasons in that the parties negotiated and agreed to not have an appeal process.”
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