Pretoria - Former City of Tshwane general workers, who pitched for work after a ruling by the South African Local Government Bargaining Council that they must be reinstated, were blocked from entering municipal premises.
This was after the City had indicated that it would approach the Labour Court in a bid to render the Bargaining Council ruling null and void.
The workers were hired by the municipality in 2019 but their contracts were terminated in October last year after it was concluded that their posts were redundant.
They previously embarked on marches to Tshwane House demanding to be reinstated into their positions.
Their last resort was to approach the Bargaining Council, where they argued that they were unfairly dismissed by the City.
The Bargaining Council ruled in their favour on February 28 2022, ordering the City to employ them permanently with effect from today.
In addition, the Bargaining Council commissioner, Joseph Mphaphuli, ordered the metro to pay each worker an arrear salary of at least R115 000. The salaries would be for the duration of employment they would have earned had it not been for “unfair dismissal”.
Mphaphuli found that the applicants were employed as general workers and that there was “no end to cleaning the City”.
The 88 workers arrived in their numbers in the morning at a waste management depot in Pretoria West with anticipation to resume work.
They were, however, disappointed that they could not be allowed inside because the gates were closed.
Their representative, Mzuvele Cele, said workers had not received any formal communication either from the City or from the court regarding their reinstatement.
He said they only learnt about the City’s legal action from a media statement.
Yesterday, Cele was called into a meeting with some municipal senior officials.
Following the meeting he accused the City of only expressing a “wish” to take up the ruling on review.
“There is no documentation but only a review to make an application. This is a time delaying tactic and it is going to waste taxpayers’ money on the case that they already know they are going to lose. They are making a lot of excuses in terms of money to pay us,” he said.
According to him, the way forward would be to go back to the Bargaining Council and “ask about the remedies available in terms of the law”.
“If they go to the Labour Court and file papers, we are going to oppose them,” he said.
He said workers won’t be able to convene tomorrow because they are broke after being out of work for more than 16 months.
The City was not readily available to comment, but on Friday its spokesperson Selby Bokaba said the City has begun a process to review the ruling to reinstate "the so-called ‘capacity workers’ at the Labour Court in Johannesburg”.
He said the City believed that a different court would most likely arrive at a different outcome.
“Tshwane employed 627 workers to assist at waste management on a fixed 12-month contract from November 2019 until October 31, 2020. Upon expiry of their contract, 88 of those workers demanded to be permanently absorbed as the City’s employees,” Bokaba said.
Pretoria News