Africa-Press – South-Africa. In a blow to the National Education Health Workers Union (Nehawu), the Labour Court in Johannesburg upheld an interdict to stop its strike on Monday.
Nehawu had planned to go on an indefinite strike from Monday after serving a strike notice on 24 February.
Over the weekend, however, government obtained an interdict against the strike. Nehawu then moved to appeal it.
On Monday, the Labour Court found that the interdict is still enforceable, despite the union’s moves to appeal it.
It granted the minister and department of public service and administration leave to execute the interdict order handed down at the weekend, finding that if the strike went ahead as planned on Monday, it would cause irreparable harm to the government and affect numerous public services including education, health, police, home affairs, social development and correctional services.
While the union served an application of leave to appeal the ruling on Sunday, the matter was not yet filed with the registrar of the Labour Court when the matter was heard on Monday morning.
Nehawu members began protesting and blocking the entrances to hospitals earlier on Monday. The union believed that its application for leave to appeal the ruling would automatically suspend it. The application for leave to appeal is yet to be argued.
But the latest Labour Court ruling found that the interdict is enforceable.
According to the Department of Health, there were “violent and disruptive actions” by some Nehawu members at several major hospitals on Monday including Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital and Tembisa Hospital in Gauteng; Pelonomi and Manapo Hospitals in the Free State, Khayelitsha Hospital in the Western Cape, Tshepong and Moses Kotane Hospitals in the North West, and Kimberly and Upington Hospitals in the Northern Cape.
“As Nehawu, we are shocked by this decision to interdict us with no reason provided […] As Nehawu, we reiterate once again that this 6th Administration is hell-bent on destroying collective bargaining, rights of workers and made it as its task to reverse and roll-back the gains made by workers over the years,” said the Nehawu secretariat in a statement.
Nehawu and other prominent public sector unions have been locked in a long-standing battle with government over wages. The union is expected to brief the media on the labour court saga and the protests later on Monday.
In 2020, government reneged on the final year of a three-year agreement. In 2021/22, the parties reached an agreement that included a R1 000 non-pensionable allowance after tax, but in the following year, talks deadlocked again, after government unilaterally implemented a 3% increase plus the gratuity, arguing that this amounted to a 7% increase – which unions disputed.
Late in February, government tabled an offer that averaged at a pensionable increase of 4.7% for the 2023/24 financial year.
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