Pretoria - The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) in Tshwane has expressed hope that its Tuesday meeting with ActionSA will pave a way to a round-table discussion with the employer over the impasse about salary increases.
Some members affiliated to Samwu have been on an unprotected strike for more than three months, resulting in disruption of service delivery such as refuse collection and withdrawal of Tshwane Bus Services.
Samwu regional secretary, Precious Theledi, yesterday told Pretoria News that the meeting with ActionSA was fruitful in the sense that “we wanted political parties in council to understand where we are coming from”.
“For them coming to talk to us we realised that it is all political parties that are agreeing with what the DA is doing because the executive mayor (Cilliers Brink) has turned the administrative crisis into a political battle. It is important for political parties to understand our side of the story that we are not necessarily fighting a political battle like the executive mayor is saying. We just want what is due to us as employees of the city,” she said.
She emphasised that while the union was an affiliate of Cosatu “that is in alliance with the ANC, we are a union; we are not a political party”.
She said the way forward was for ActionSA to try to get the city and unions to a round-table discussion “because the executive mayor is saying he is not going to have a round-table with Samwu – as if not having a round-table is a victory to him”.
She said Brink must stop overstepping on administrative matters and allow city manager Johann Mettler to have a round-table with the unions.
ActionSA Gauteng provincial chairperson Funzi Ngobeni also hailed the meeting as successful, saying it was meant to assist in ending the strike action in the city, which “negatively affects service delivery to all residents in the capital city”.
“As a committed partner of the multi-party government, ActionSA agrees that the city’s finances should be stabilised following years of instability and we continue to stand against any form of vandalism of public property,” he said.
He said the party had already raised concerns at the multi-party coalition management committee, where it engaged Brink, “urging a departure from the dismissal of municipal workers’ concerns and rather to engage proactively with unions in the best interest of the residents of the city”.
“This meeting did not find agreement and therefore the matter has been referred to the national coalition oversight group,” Ngobeni said.
He said ActionSA did not believe there were any winners in the current strike action.
“It is not good enough for Brink and the DA to force residents to live without refuse removal or other basic services to avoid the rational need to sit down and engage the unions to achieve the compromise that gets service delivery back again,” he said.
Pretoria News