Two of the country’s largest municipal workers’ unions are exploring legal options after criticising the labour court for judicial overreach for reviewing and setting aside binding decisions of the SA Local Government Bargaining Council (Salgbc) on wage increases for the Tshwane metro’s municipal staff.
This follows acting labour court judge Sean Snyman’s ruling on the City of Tshwane’s wage exemption applications in respect of the 3.5% wage increase for 2021 and a 5.4% pay hike for 2023.
For the 2021 wage agreement, Snyman ruled that the metro’s exemption application must be heard again before another exemption panellist to be appointed by Salgbc. Regarding the 2023 wage deal, the acting judge said the capital city must be granted exemption from implementing the pay deal.
The labour court judgment comes almost six months after the SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu), the biggest union in the local government sector, representing 160,000 of the country’s estimated 350,000 municipal workers, ended its four-month illegal work stoppage in Tshwane in November 2024, during which municipal property such as garbage trucks and other infrastructure was vandalised and destroyed.
Samwu members were demanding that the metro implement a 5.4% wage increase — the last leg of a three-year wage agreement signed at the Salgbc in 2021.
The city, which had refused to negotiate with the union, argued that it did not have the R600m required for the agreement and unsuccessfully applied to the Salgbc for an exemption. It then approached the labour court.
Samwu general secretary Dumisani Magagula said on Monday that the judgment represented a “deeply troubling intervention by the courts in the collective bargaining process, with far-reaching consequences for workers’ rights”.
“This ruling is not a neutral legal exercise but a judicial endorsement of austerity, continuing a dangerous trend of courts encroaching into collective bargaining to undermine worker protections and erode the power of unions to effectively represent their members,” Magagula said.
“The labour court’s decision to override the Salgbc’s authority, a body constitutionally mandated to resolve labour disputes within the local government sector and give effect to agreements reached through collective bargaining, represents a direct attack on the autonomy of collective bargaining.”
He criticised the court for “overstepping its role”, adding that the “judicial intervention” mirrored the Constitutional Court’s decision in a matter involving a wage deal for public servants.
The Constitutional Court ruled in 2022 that the government could back out of implementing the last part of the three-year wage deal signed in the public service co-ordinating bargaining council in 2018 because the unions were “unjustifiably enriched” from the “impugned collective agreement”.
“These rulings collectively signal a judicial green light for employers, particularly within the public sector, to disregard binding collective agreements with increasing impunity, cynically weaponising unverified and often deliberately misleading claims of ‘financial distress’ to legitimise the exploitation of their workforce and the erosion of hard-won employment conditions,” Magagula said.
“Samwu will not relent in the face of this judicial assault. We are immediately preparing urgent and robust legal appeals to the labour appeal court and, if necessary, the Constitutional Court, challenging both the procedural illegitimacy and the deeply ingrained substantive bias that characterises this deeply flawed ruling.”
Johan Koen, general secretary of the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu), which represents more than 110,000 employees in the local government sector, said the union was “preparing an action plan” on the judgment.
“We are currently analysing the full implications of the judgment (which is 70 pages long) to determine the most strategic course of action to protect our members’ rights and interests.
“Our immediate focus is on thoroughly reviewing the court’s findings to assess potential avenues for further legal recourse. We are also consulting with our legal teams to explore all options available to us, from possible appeals to other strategic interventions.”
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