The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) has filed legal papers to challenge a court decision pertaining to a 5.4% wage agreement it signed with Tshwane two years ago.
Samwu is the biggest union in the local government sector, representing 160,000 of the country’s estimated 350,000 municipal workers,
About six months ago, acting labour court judge Sean Snyman ruled the capital city was exempt from implementing the pay deal reached at the South African Local Government Bargaining Council (Salgbc) in 2023.
The Tshwane metro had approached the courts arguing it did not have the R600m needed to effect the agreement. At the time of the ruling, Samwu said it would appeal.
On Monday, Samwu deputy general secretary Nkhetheni Muthavhi said the papers had been lodged with the labour appeals court.
In November 2024, Samwu ended its four-month illegal strike in the capital city, during which municipal property, such as garbage trucks and other infrastructure, was vandalised or destroyed.
Samwu members demanded that the metro implement the 5.4% wage increase, but the city, which had refused to negotiate with the union, argued it did not have the R600m required for the agreement and unsuccessfully applied to the bargaining council for an exemption. It then approached the labour court, which ruled in its favour.
Meanwhile, the City of Tshwane was scrambling to find about R1.6bn after it elected not to appeal against a ruling by the bargaining council that it should abide by a 3.5% wage hike agreement from 2021/22.
It was hoped the money would come from the metro’s revenue collection and debt collected from government departments and state institutions.
In July 2020, the Tshwane metro implemented a 6.25% pay rise that increased the city’s wage bill by R45m a month. The increase was part of the last leg of a three-year wage hike agreement signed at the bargaining council in 2018.
In August 2020, the capital city bowed to pressure from unions, including Samwu, 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 that 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 from more than 7,000 workers came two weeks after Tshwane agreed to implement the benchmarking agreement, which was set to cost the city R300m.
About two weeks ago, Samwu threw its weight behind a benchmarking agreement in which the City of Johannesburg could fork out more than R10bn to align staff salaries with those of other metropolitan municipalities.
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