Pretoria - Municipal workers in Tshwane have threatened to embark on lunch-hour pickets with effect from next week against the zero percent wage and salary increase for 2023/2024 recently proposed by the municipality.
The regional South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) said it obtained a mandate to “activate” picketing activities from workers, who attended a mass meeting on Monday at Tshwane House.
Union regional chairperson Nkhetheni Muthavhi said the workers were generally aggrieved by the city’s stance not to increase salaries.
“They feel like this administration just doesn't want to pay workers, especially after we didn't get an increase in 2021/2022,” he said.
Muthavhi said workers were particularly concerned that the city was spending more money on “private companies even for work that they can do”.
“They think the money that was supposed to be paying workers goes to service providers. The mandate that we were given which is very clear is that we need to start activating actions in the form of pickets every day during lunch time until our demands are met,” he said.
In addition, workers wanted the union to “declare one month when we would call for an anti-privatisation month and say the City of Tshwane must stop using companies where workers can do the work”
Also sharply raised by workers was the issue of R3 500 salary and wage increase, which was currently at the Labour Court.
The City is fighting to extricate itself from the salary and wage collective agreement for the 2021/2022 financial year.
Muthavhi said the R3 500 amount was supposed to be for salary increases, dating back from June 2021 to June 2022.
“The one that they paid is R4 900 from July 2022 and this is the one that is running now,” he said.
The union, he said, was asked by workers to apply for the dismissal of the Labour Court case brought by the city after the applicant’s failure to submit outstanding court documents.
“The next court date we must then go and march outside the court to show our dissatisfaction,” he said.
Regarding the zero percent increase, he said: “We have not yet formally engaged them on the matter. We have met the mayor and we raised our dissatisfaction that he is not an administrator and that he is a politician. As far as we are concerned, the issue of salary increases sits with the city manager and not with politicians so he (mayor) jumped the gun.”
The union would soon arrange a meeting with the city manager Johann Mettler to discuss disputes over salary increases.
Muthavhi said the planned lunch-hour pickets should have started already, but they were postponed to next week because of Samwu’s general executive committee meeting under way in Boksburg.
“So we may activate this thing starting from Monday next week,” he said.
The proposed zero wage increase was recently tabled in council, where Finance MMC Peter Sutton said the metro would apply to exempt itself from paying municipal workers a salary increment for the 2023/24 financial year.
Sutton said the stance was also informed by the national Treasury guideline, which advised the City to reduce its expenditure by 30%.
He expressed hope that officials would understand the rationale behind the non-payment of salary increases because they were also residents familiar with the city’s financial challenges.
“The major thing in that budget would be the proposed 0% salary increase for councillors as well as officials, and that is due to the liquidity situation we find in the city and with the National Treasury guideline that we need to reduce expenditure,” he said.
Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink, also said the City’s wage bill was already exorbitant, with at least 39% of the municipal budget spent on salary payments.
Pretoria News