Pretoria - The legal fight by the City of Tshwane to exempt itself from paying workers a 3.5% salary increase in line with last year’s agreement with the unions will soon take centre stage in the Labour Court.
This comes after a failed bid by the SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union to force the City to honour the salary agreement pending the court case.
The City approached the court after its exemption application from a wage agreement with the unions was dismissed by the SA Local Government Bargaining Council on April 8.
In an arbitration ruling dated August 24, 2022 the bargaining council ruled in favour of the City’s move for a review application in the Labour Court, challenging the April 8 verdict.
In last week’s ruling, senior panellist Yusuf Nagdee criticised the April verdict which dismissed the City’s exemption application “without hearing the reasons for exemption, and in particular did not decide the affordability of the increases”.
Nagdee said the panellists in April needed to conduct a financial inquiry based on the financial information that the Tshwane Metro was required to include in the application.
“The purpose of the financial inquiry is to determine whether the employer can afford to implement the provisions from which it seeks an exemption,” said the ruling.
In its application, the City said that failure to exempt it from the agreement would force it to spend R489 million in increases, in breach of the statutory prohibition of the Municipal Finance Management Act.
According to the metro, the act in question prohibits operational expenditure that is not budgeted for and approved by the council.
Parties are still awaiting a date for the review application hearing.
Samwu regional chairperson Nkhetheni Muthavhi yesterday said unions had no choice but to wait until the matter was ventilated in the Labour Court.
“After the City failed to pay a 3.5% salary increase, Samwu followed an enforcement route and applied for a compliance order.
“The order was granted in our favour, but unfortunately the City failed to implement it,” the union previously said.
According to Samwu, the bargaining council scheduled the matter for arbitration on March 9.
“During the hearing, the City requested the arbitrator to stay off the hearing, noting that it applied for exemption on March 8.
“The City lost the exemption application, and the arbitration hearing was scheduled for May 26.
“On that day, the City requested that the matter be postponed since it had filed a review application on exemption with the Labour Court,” said the union.
Pretoria News