The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) in Tshwane Region held a meeting with City of Tshwane Administrators on 07 August 2020 to engage on the impasse between SAMWU and City of Tshwane on payment of benchmarking monies. This meeting follows a series of other meetings after the City had reneged on the collective agreement on benchmarking. In pursuit of addressing the impasse, the employer made some proposals for consideration by ourselves

In processing our response, SAMWU as a worker control organization engaged its members in various depots/constituencies, Shopstewards and Regional Executive Committee to process the proposal. This proposal was made after the City had deadlocked with SAMWU on payment of Salary increase and benchmarking outstanding monies. SAMWU had always maintained that the City cannot renege from a signed collective since such will lead to the demise of collective bargaining.

Our members have since mandated the Regional leadership to agree to the proposal as follows

·       That we accept the one-year payment to be effected immediately latest by Friday, 14 August 2020

·       That all those who are covered by the collective agreement be paid

·       That the second payment be effected before end of December 2020 and that if efforts to realize savings by the end of August 2020 through Chief Audit Executive bear fruits payments be made earlier than December 2020

As SAMWU we singlehandedly fought hard to ensure that our members secure the best possible deal considering the difficult economic situation we currently facing. We believe that this is the best deal we could achieve especially when one looks at the challenges in other sectors in the country. 

Further to that our members have since mandated Regional leadership to come up with strategies on how we as a Union can assist Revenue enhancement strategy of the City and further identify and close leakages in the system including corruption. We will, therefore, going forward fight for remunicipalisation of services

We thank our members for their patience, faith and for entrusting the union to secure best deal possible We further thank the negotiation team for the dedication and work put into these engagements in the interest of our members.

Issued by SAMWU Tshwane Region