Salga, the employer body representing the country’s 257 municipalities, says it has given its negotiators the leeway to discuss wages with an open mind and factor in the rising cost of living, but cautioned against bloating the wage bill.
The SA Local Government Association (Salga) and unions including the Independent Municipal and Allied Workers Union (Imatu) and SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) have been negotiating wage increases at the SA Local Government Bargaining Council since Monday.
While Samwu’s primary demands include a one-year 15% wage increase — almost three times the 5.2% inflation rate recorded in April and May, Imatu president Keith Swanepoel said the union would not be making its demands known. “Save to say we are in negotiations. We are still in the process. It is going well. It is slow because this is a big sector. Let’s hope for the best,” he said.
Saxonwold and Parkwood Residents Association chair Bill Haslam said the wage demand by Samwu was beyond the inflation rate and could not be justified under any circumstance, “when service delivery has been so poor”.
He said municipal rates and taxes had also skyrocketed. “It makes no sense at all to me to demand such an increase. It would be unfair to everybody concerned. Municipal workers shouldn’t exploit the situation,” Haslam said.
Speaking to Business Day this week, Salga president Bheki Stofile said the association had asked its negotiating team to “go to the talks with a very open mind”.
“We said we must look into the extreme cost of living today, but we must also be careful not to balloon the salary bill beyond the required percentage. Our team is very informed,” Stofile said.
The rising cost of living has resulted in food, fuel, transport and electricity costs shooting through the roof and has spurred unions to demand above-inflation increases to offset it.
In his budget vote speech this week, co-operative governance and traditional affairs minister Velenkosini Hlabisa announced that of the department’s allocated budget of R395.7bn over the medium-term expenditure framework, R395.7bn or 95.6%, would be transferred to municipalities and affiliated entities.
The country’s municipalities are at the forefront of service delivery but many are grappling with capacity challenges, with the least qualified often presiding over critical departments. This has led, in many instances, to the collapse of services including the provision of refuse collection, drinkable water and sanitation, while systemic looting, corruption and fraud became rampant.
According to the Cogta website, there are 32 municipalities placed under section 139 of the constitution and the Municipal Finance Management Act. This is the most extreme form of intervention by Cogta as it empowers the provincial executive to step in if a municipality cannot approve a budget, provide basic services or meet its financial commitments.
Velenkosini caused a stir after his recent remarks that dysfunctional councils would be dissolved and fresh elections held for officials.
“The first thing you do in a dysfunctional municipality is intervene with support, but it cannot go [on] indefinitely — a line must be drawn somewhere. ...We are trying to intervene, we are trying to support, [but] the co-operation is bad, the last option is to dissolve [the councils].”
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