Union threatens legal action to force Tshwane to pay salaries

THE SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) in Tshwane has threatened to approach the courts in an efort to force the municipality to pay workers whose salaries were withheld last Friday on the grounds that they have been on an unprotected strike.

This was revealed by the union’s acting regional secretary, Precious Theledi, in a memo to Samwu shopstewards following disappointment regisitered by some workers who were not paid.

In the memo, Theledi said: “Samwu has noted with disdain the non-payment of salaries of its members on August 25, 2023.

“The City just decided not to honour its obligation of paying employees tier salaries without providing reasons for doing this.”

She added that the union had realised that employees’ salaries had been withheld, and City manager Johann Mettler issued a memo to group heads or regional heads, asking them to motivate on behalf of employees as to why they should receive their salaries.

Theledi said: “The employer cannot unilaterally decide to withhold employees salaries and demand reasons why employees should be paid.

“This is against the conditions of employment of employees,” Theledi said.

She said the union was dealing with the matter and was in the process of filing an urgent application to the bargaining council and court to force the City to pay workers their salaries.

At a media briefing at Tshwane House yesterday, Mettler said: “We conduct a daily analysis of our attendance register. We have circulated a communication to employees and supervisors to confirm attendance on specific days. Where there is no evidence of attendance, a no-work, no-pay principle is applied. Salary recalls were implemented in line with a list submitted by line managers reporting that the attendance register was signed by employees, but no services were rendered.”

Mayor Cilliers Brink said: “The City of Tshwane cannot pay contractors to fix leaks, restore electricity and repair sewer lines, and then pay the salaries of employees who sign in and then refuse to do these things. If we pay those salaries, we will be incurring fruitless and wasteful expenditure.”

Since the wage strike began on July 26, the City has fired at least 122 workers for refusing to return to work and intimidating their colleagues, among other reasons.

Recently, both the EFF and ANC called for the reinstatement of dismissed workers.

Brink said: “We cannot give the management of the City a policy instruction to carry out and then undermine them by demanding that employees who have been lawfully dismissed must be re-employed. If trade unions have this level of control over political parties, if they can veto the mandate of a democratically elected government, then we have no democracy or rule of law.”

The City has also opened a total of 34 criminal cases with SAPS, ranging from cable theft, intimidation, car hijacking, one death threat, malicious damage to property and arson to a Centurion depot.

Mettler said: “As far as the security measures are concerned, we have a security cluster consisting of the metro police, city asset protection services and SAPS.”

He said some of the municipal sites were at risk of being attacked and needed 24-hour security. He said, in some instances the Tshwane Metro Police and SAPS have to escort service delivery teams.

Tshwane bus services remained suspended because the city didn’t want to risk a situation where a bus full of passengers was torched.