Firefighters seek intervention
MORE than 500 firefighters facing disciplinary hearings for refusing to “work as required” are seeking community and political intervention in a bid to stop the City from sanctioning them.
Some of those firefighters were summoned to a meeting relating to their pending disciplinary hearing to communicate a speedy and amicable solution by the City’s acting executive director, Vincent Botto, at the Cape Town Stadium yesterday.
SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) regional chairperson Mzoxolo Miselo said the City was still on the verge of disciplining 525 firefighters.
The firefighters face disciplinary hearings for refusing to “work as required”.
Their letters of notice from the City said they allegedly committed wilful gross misconduct when, from October 1 to 8, 2019, they took part in an unlawful strike by refusing to work according to the shift system.
Miselo said they had tried some interventions in terms of how the City of Cape Town should deal with the situation, “and they have not listened to us”.
Miselo denied that they had participated in a strike action.
He said they knew the strike processes, and if they were on strike then there were processes that the City needed to follow, which it had not.
“We have been trying to convince them that these people were not on strike, it’s just that they had been talking about the fire lapse agreement, which is old and outdated,” he said.
JP Smith, the Mayco member for safety and security, said no decision had been taken to dismiss the firefighters, as falsely claimed by Samwu, and that a proposal had been made to resolve the matter in respect of 439 firefighters so that any possible sanction of dismissal could be avoided.
Smith said the City of Cape Town had also placed it on record by written confirmation to both Samwu and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union that it was willing and ready to review the collective agreement on firefighter working conditions at any time.