Municipality weighing appeals on salary agreement

A possible strike hinges on whether the provincial department of co-operative governance (Cogta) can satisfy all employees who gained by the recent salary and job grade benchmarking, in which some employees scored and others gained zero.

The agreement of 24-month worth of backpay in three installments is the current hot potato among employees.

The first installment was paid to employees at the end of January, resulting in employees realising that they would not receive the salary increments they were expecting, resulting in the third strike since September last year.

The second installment was supposed to be paid out now, but employees embarked on an appeals process to stop payment.

The majority of disgruntled employees now want the available money to be paid out to all employees equally, which negatively affects the higher-earning employees’ backpay.

A provincial Cogta delegation is presently at the municipality to work through the hundreds of appeals received from affected employees.

A full-blown strike has not been announced and employees are awaiting the outcome of the appeals panel, a newly established conflict resolution panel headed by Cogta.

After a decision on the appeals is reached, the matter will be sent to council for final implementation.
Employees are, however still adamant that they want level 5 salaries.

The municipality’s executive management is currently at level 6, while councillors and political office bearers remain, are awaiting level 5 approval from Cogta.

The civic centre is still on lockdown with no services being rendered after disgruntled employees disrupted a service delivery meeting yesterday.
Those identified as part of the group who disrupted the meeting, will face disciplinary action, which employees are also not happy with.

Residents are fuming over the possibility of another strike with civic organisations like “Dis Nou Genoeg!” already regrouping to counter a strike.