The illegal and violent wage strike in Tshwane, which has been ongoing for more than a month and is affecting service delivery, is showing no sign of letting up.
Mayor Cilliers Brink says the metro will not cower in the face of Samwu’s “terror” tactics as there was no money to implement the disputed salary deal.
The strike, which was declared illegal by the labour court, began on July 26 with the SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) members demanding the city implement a 5.4% pay increase reached in the SA Local Government Bargaining Council (Salgbc) in 2021. Inflation slowed to a two-year low of 4.7% in July, from 5.4% in June.
The city responded to the wage demand by saying it did not have the R600m needed to implement the pay deal and subsequently applied to Salgbc for an exemption from implementing it.
The industrial action, which has seen nearly 100 city employees fired, has turned violent with at least one employee shot at and city infrastructure vandalised and set on fire.
Briefing the media on the strike update on Wednesday, Brink said that in the past 48 hours, “two waste removal trucks have been torched, and as expected this has affected service delivery negatively with some service providers withholding their services for safety reasons”.
Capital City Business Chamber executive director Chrys Haitas said the strike had affected businesses in the metro “badly”.
“The environment is not pleasant but I must indicate that where they can, those who are not striking are very helpful,” Haitas said. She would not divulge how the city workers were rolling out service delivery, for their own safety.
“Samwu’s unprotected strike has turned into a criminal assault on the democratically elected government of the city and Tshwane residents. What started as a wage dispute has turned into a campaign of criminality,” Brink said.
Those behind the strike were using “violence, criminality and terror as bargaining chips. Whether or not Samwu still has control of the situation, they must be held accountable”.
Brink said the metro cannot afford a salary increase this year as the city’s R46.9bn budget for the 2023/24 financial year was underfunded by at least R3bn.
While the metro employees were affected by the rising cost of living, Cilliers said on average municipal officials earn “good salaries compared to what is paid in the private sector”.
The city’s funding plan and the budget, which was supported by 155 of the 214 councillors including those from the ANC, proposed a 0% increase for officials and councillors in this financial year.
Samwu, the biggest local government union representing about 160,000 of the country’s nearly 300,000 municipal workers, is an affiliate of labour federation Cosatu, a key ally of the ANC.
“The City of Tshwane does not have money to pay increases and, quite frankly, neither do most municipalities in this country. Year on year, municipalities have had to pay salary increases in excess of inflation, and mostly we have been too afraid to apply for exemption,” said Brink.
The mayor put his foot down, saying the municipality could not 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. If you support the rule of law, you must also support the dismissal of employees who cannot be bothered to return to work in the face of a court interdict as well as several ultimatums.”
Samwu general secretary Dumisane Magagula said: “We did not call a strike at Tshwane; workers are working, they are at work everyday. Currently, we are sitting in an exemption hearing [in the bargaining council] where the metro has applied to be exempted from implementing the wage agreement, and we are opposing that.”
Samwu has a history of demanding wage increases from the cash-strapped metro.
In July 2020, the metro implemented a 6.25% pay rise that increased the city’s wage bill by R45m a month. The 6.25% increase was part of the last leg of a three-year wage hike agreement signed at the Salgbcin 2018.
In August 2020, the capital city bowed to pressure from unions to implement a benchmarking agreement aimed at putting Tshwane municipal employees’ wages on par with those of other top municipalities.
It was said at the time the decision was likely to put extra strain on metro finances already under pressure as residents, companies and government departments struggled to pay for services during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Samwu later opposed a vetting process to remove ghost employees from the payroll. The decision to withhold pay of more than 7,000 workers came two weeks after Tshwane agreed to implement the benchmarking agreement, which was set to cost the city R300m.
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