Bay scrambles to find R68m in back pay for watchmen
Council must decide whether to approve higher salary grade for 640 safety and security employees absorbed by city in 2017
The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality is scrambling to find R68m in back pay for 640 safety and security directorate watchmen whose employment scale was incorrectly graded when they were absorbed by the city in 2017.
The guards were previously employed by private security companies contracted by the municipality until it was decided they be permanently employed on task grade 3, though no proper job description for them was in place.
The matter was brought up at a joint mayoral and budget and treasury committee meeting on Thursday, where councillors were divided on whether the workers’ task grading should be taken up two notches to task grade 5 and back paid from June 2021.
The long-standing issue was initially flagged by the SA Local Government Association’s Eastern Cape audit committee, which motivated for a review of the employment of the watchmen and their salary grading.
When the workers caught wind of the developments, they threatened to strike and burn buildings, leading to trade union Imatu taking up the matter with the SA Local Government Bargaining Council, which ruled in their favour on May 3, 2021.
Arbiter Naledi BurwanaBisiwe granted the award as follows:
● The parties agreed that the job description of the watchmen should be reviewed and finalised by end of June 2021 to ensure that it was updated and properly aligned with the responsibilities assigned to the employees;
● Corporate services undertook to ensure that the job evaluation of the watchmen position with its updated job description was expedited and finalised by end of September 2021; and
● The parties further agreed that the job evaluation outcome of the process would be implemented no later than January 1 last year.
However, the city failed to act on the instructions of the arbiter, which led to the accumulation of back pay.
At Thursday’s committee meeting it was resolved that the mayoral committee recommend to the council that it consider the financial implications of the implementation of the new task grade 5 for the watchmen.
DA councillor and political head for corporate services Annette Lovemore said it would cost the city R68m to give all 640 employees back pay from 2021.
“We still need to find an additional R28m a year for salary increases and it’s only fair because we’ve not behaved responsibly in this regard — we should’ve acted on the arbitration award,” Lovemore said.
“The longer we’ve let this go on the more the financial backlog accumulated.
“We were supposed to pay their grade 5 salaries from January and pay R68m worth of back pay since 2021.”
She said negotiations were continuing.
“I wonder where will we source this money from, will that speak to additional rates for residents because money to fund this is not yet available.”
ACDP councillor and political head for electricity and energy Lance Grootboom said the workers did not deserve to have their salaries increased because they had failed to do their job.
“Not long after we made the decision to absorb them we had the Covid-19 lockdown and required our properties and facilities to be looked after but they were vandalised under their watch.
“These workers earned nothing more than R6,000 when they were employed by the private security and they’re already earning about R20,000 and with the salary increases due in the next financial year they obviously will be earning more and for what because they are not doing their jobs.”
GOOD councillor and political head for safety and security Lawrence Troon said he was among the few councillors who had been against the absorption of the workers.