Tshwane and Labour unions reach consensus
07 August 2020
After weeks of labour unrest precipitated by the outstanding payment of benchmarking monies to the workers, the City of Tshwane and the union representatives have today reached an agreement which effectively brought an end to the labour dispute.
Both the employer and labour have agreed that workers will be paid the first tranche of the benchmarking monies for the 2017/18 Financial Year at the end of August 2020, while the payment for the 2018/19 Financial Year will be made before the end of 2020.
Negotiations on the payment for the Divisional and Group Heads, colloquially known as Non-56 officials, will be made after a report had been submitted, incorporating the financial implications to the City.
Tshwane Head Administrator Mpho Nawa has hailed breaking the impasse as a win-win situation for all parties involved in the dispute and said that the City leadership has always remained committed to honouring the agreement entered into between the union representatives and the previous administration.
Nawa said the unions and staff have also agreed to urgently prioritise service delivery and the cleaning the City.
“We have agreed to roll-up our sleeves to clear the backlog in service delivery occasioned by the labour unrest and remove the filth and litter across all the City’s regions. All the services that had been affected by the unrest will return to normal with immediate effect.“We also wish to profusely apologise to our residents for the inconvenience they’ve endured over the past three weeks or so. We hope that going forward, we will find a civil way of protesting without vandalising or causing any damage to property of the City or of any resident or business within the borders of our municipality,” Nawa cautioned.
Last month, the City paid its workers the annual wage increment of 6.25%, amid very difficult financial constraints. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has put the City’s finances in a difficult position due to the low collection rate as a result of some of the residents losing their jobs and thus being unable to pay their municipal accounts.
The City and labour have committed to work hard to enhance revenue generation to ensure that the municipality remains financially sustainable to enable to continue providing the much-needed services to the communities.
Issued by Communication, Marketing and Events Department.