Africa-Press – South-Africa. The City of Joburg and the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) have given a team until Friday to come up with a solution to wage disparity gripes at the metro after members of the union barricaded a major freeway in the city over these grievances.
Samwu members’ decision to barricade the M1 in Johannesburg last week laid bare the impasse between management and labour at the metro over inconsistency in salaries and pay progression after Johannesburg Mayor Mpho Phalatse failed to meet with them on Thursday.
At issue is the failure to properly implement a politically facilitated agreement (PFA) to resolve the wage disparities among the metro’s staff. The agreement was struck in 2016, but Samwu said it has still not been properly applied six years later.
The metro and Samwu held a meeting late on Friday afternoon and agreed that the financially troubled city would spend this week assessing its ability to rectify the wage and pay progression disparities.
Samwu provincial treasurer in Gauteng, Karabo Ramahuma, told News24 that the union was meant to meet with management on Thursday over the PFA of 2016, but members were frustrated after they could not secure a meeting with the mayor. He maintained that the barricade was not a strike, but a demonstration of frustration from members.
“The PFA was an agreement entered into when we were on strike in 2016, as we were saying the city was using an incorrect salary scale. Some councils are paying their people more for the same work than this one, the biggest metro in the country. The city also does not take into account the number of years our members have served,” said Ramahuma.
Ramahuma said since the PFA of 2016 was struck, it has not been applied throughout the metro, adding that the metro only chose to apply the PFA depending on which department could apply the most immediate pressure on management.
“What the city did in the process was that they just picked a band of managers like assistant directors and decided to apply PFA to them. We continued to engage, whereas they responded to whichever department applied pressure to them. It was a piecemeal undertaking,” Ramahuma said.
He said a task team would work from Monday to Friday to determine how much can be paid to staff while the remainder of the pay progression will be left to budget adjustments. Ramahuma said once the team formulates an offer by Friday, Samwu will take it to members.
Phalatse said in a statement that the metro was open with Samwu about the budgetary limitations of the PFA’s full implementation, adding that the city and labour agreed on a way forward.
“It must be placed on record that the city has played open cards with unions, and we jointly agreed on a phased implementation of the PFA, which began in September of this year. The primary objective of the PFA was to attempt to resolve a litany of complaints related to salary disparities that existed across the city at the time,” said Phalatse.
Phalatse said the metro’s multi-party government had engaged unions in good faith, compared to past administrations, where she said the relationship between the metro and labour “was in a poor state, and, in some instances, nonexistent”.
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