Union stands firm on offer

The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) is adamant it is not prepared to sign a wage agreement that would put its members in a disadvantaged position in the light of the current economic constraints marked by VAT and fuel increases.

The employer body, the South African Local Government Association (Salga), said wages and increases would not be paid for July because negotiations had dragged on and overlapped into the new financial year.

Samwu, along with the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu), deadlocked with Salga at the local government bargaining council talks and the two unions separately declared disputes that were referred for conciliation by the CCMA. But Samwu rejected the proposals from the conciliation facilitator on June 28.

Although Imatu and Salga agreed to accept the proposal, Salga was prepared to give the conciliation process a chance to conclude and each of the union’s dispute to be processed.

The facilitator recommended, among other things, an across the board 7% salary and wage increase with effect from July 1 and that employees who earned a basic salary of R9 000 monthly or less should receive a further 0.5% increase with effect from January 1.

But Samwu rejected what it called attempts to force the facilitator’s proposal on municipal workers.

“As a mandate-driven organisation, the mandate received from the union’s membership was the rejection of the proposal and as such we cannot be party to an agreement which municipal workers have rejected,” Samwu said.

The union said it was concerned that negotiations had dragged for so long and overlapped into the new financial year as it needed negotiations to be concluded before June 30 when the old agreement lapsed.

“We are, however, not going to rush the process for the sake of conclusion, particularly when the current offer on the table does not have any substantial increments for our members and municipal workers in general,” the union said.

Samwu’s dispute was scheduled to be heard in the conciliation process on July 16.

“We are determined to ensuring that municipal workers receive an increment which would make substantive changes to their lives. We cannot allow a situation where municipal workers bail out their employer by agreeing to the facilitator’s proposal.”

Salga said in a statement it respected the bargaining council rules and the desire by the unions to approach the dispute process in different ways and that they were willing to accommodate the two separate conciliation processes of the unions.