Tshwane Mayor Cilliers Brink was unable to fulfil his promise of receiving a memorandum of demands from Cosatu on Friday because marchers failed to arrive at noon – the appointed time he expected them at Tshwane House.
Brink’s spokesperson, Sipho Stuurman, said the mayor was ready to accept the memo as had been arranged with the trade union federation.
“But by 1.20pm the march had still not arrived at Tshwane House, and the mayor had to leave to attend to another prearranged engagement.”
City Manager Johann Mettler, who availed himself to accept the memorandum, was also forced to change his mind after he was intimidated by a violent crowd.
Stuurman said: “The City is committed to maintaining relations with organised labour, and the executive aand management of the City will apply its mind to Cosatu’s inputs. We implore the trade union federation and its affiliates to respect the collective agreement and the rule of law.”
During the march Cosatu demanded the reinstatement of workers who had been dismissed for participating in the unprotected strike.
Cosatu also called for the municipality to honour a collective agreement for a salary increase.
Hundreds of workers painted the inner-city streets red and also marched to the National Treasury offices.
They thronged the city streets following their assembly at the old Putco depot in Marabastad in the morning.
Their first stop was at the National Treasury, where they raised issues related to the government’s austerity measures to put in abeyance infrastructure projects not yet advertised and vacancies still to be filled.
Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi, who led the march, said other marches took place in different provinces across the country in commemoration of International Day for Decent Work.
“We have two-hour pickets in workplaces. Here in Tshwane we are marching to the Treasury and to Tshwane Municipality,” she said.
She said the country was “dealing with interest rates that have been hiked and inflation that has gone up which has a direct impact on the standard of living of workers”.
Losi said workers marched to Tshwane House on the basis of the City reneging on signed wage increase agreements with the SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu).
She accused the municipality of refusing to pay workers salary increases and dismissing more than 100 workers to date.
Stuurman said: “Tshwane is in financial distress, the city council has had to make difficult decisions in the interest of our local community, including employees of the City. The City is taking the determination of the SA Local Government Bargaining Council, that Tshwane must pay R600 million in salary increases, on review in the Labour Appeals Court. The simple question before the court is: can the City afford these increases?”
He said the City had no doubt that had the bargaining council decided in its favour “that we would still have suffered the violent attacks currently disrupting service delivery”.
“There can be no negotiating over acts of criminality. The court must be permitted to resolve the salary dispute, and in the meantime the city will engage with organised labour in mediation forums like the CCMA,” he said.
Cosatu Gauteng provincial chairperson Amos Monyela said the march to Tshwane was in defence of the labour laws and collective bargaining.
“We believe the City of Tshwane does have capacity to fulfil the collective agreement that they signed.”
The DA-led coalition’s attitude smacked of arrogance, he said, adding that the administration had failed dismally to deliver services in the metro.
He also cited that last year the municipality failed to account for the R10 billion flagged by the Auditor-General as irregular expenditure for the 2021/22 financial year.
He said there was an agenda by right-wing forces led by the DA to collapse Samwu “because of its fighting for the demands of workers”.
Pretoria News