City Power snubs Concourt
It ignored order to absorb 41 workers left destitute
I have been reduced to being a beggar on the street
JUST three years ago, Solomon Lethuba earned a decent living manufacturing, supplying, installing and maintaining prepaid smart meters for Johannesburg City Power.
And, like many other parents, he got gratification using his income to provide for his wife and two children. He has now been reduced to a shadow of himself, struggling to fend for his family and living on the margins of survival.
This was after he lost his job along with his 40 colleagues at Grinpal Energy Management Services, a company contracted by City Power.
He is destitute despite a ruling by the Constitutional Court ordering City Power to absorb the Grinpal employees when its contract was terminated in July 2012.
Lethuba and his former colleagues’ desperation, and City Power’s contravention of an order by the highest court in the country, have shone the spotlight on the extent of the vulnerability of employees in the hands of unscrupulous companies flouting labour laws with impunity.
City Power took the case all the way to the Concourt after losing an earlier appeal at the Labour Court in May last year.
In April this year, the Concourt upheld the Labour Court’s judgment, which was that there had indeed been a transfer of business between Grinpal and City Power when the former’s contract was terminated.
The Concourt ordered that an automatic transfer of the employees from Grinpal to City Power be effected, as per the Labour Relations Act’s provision that where there is such a transfer of business, there is an automatic transfer of employees to the new employer. The court also ruled that City Power pay the 41 employees their salaries, backdated to 2012.
But two months after the Concourt’s ruling, City Power is yet to absorb the employees. And instead of reimbursing the employees fully, the entity failed to do so.
Lethuba said he had been reduced to a beggar, surviving on piece jobs, including gardening, and handouts.
He has been blacklisted, his insurance policies have lapsed and he is struggling to pay his children’s school fees. His wife is also relying on odd jobs.
Lethuba and his former colleagues have this week been staging sit-ins inside City Power’s offices in Booysens, demanding their jobs back.
“We feel so cheated. Seeing your children suffer and there isn’t much you can do is so painful,” said Lethuba, who lives in Alexandra.
Another employee, Richard Skosana, said: “We have spent three years without salaries. City Power has taken everything from us.
“We have no choice but to go back to the Constitutional Court because City Power is taking advantage of us and not complying with the court order.”
Grinpal employees used to receive an average salary of R15 000 a month. Each of them would have received more than R500 000 in salaries backdated to August 2012.
On Wednesday, they received salary statements showing that only about half the total amount had been paid. They refused to sign the statements, which they said contained “unacceptably large deductions”. To make matters worse, there is still no clarity on when they will get their jobs back.
“They said they will comply with the court order and pay up, but they rob us. I was paid for five months and others were paid less. We should have been paid for 34 months,” Skosana said.
Another employee, Arthur Pilane, said all they wanted was their jobs and backdated salaries.
“We want our money, all of it, to feed our children,” he said.
“City Power asked us to bring employment details and contracts from Grinpal, we gave them every document. We have co-operated. We are hungry,” Pilane said.
City Power spokesman Hloni Motloung admitted that the entity was in contravention of the court order.
He said the delay in employing and paying the backdated salaries was because the entity was waiting for the workers’ employment details and their records from Grinpal.