Municipal workers to receive their ‘upgraded’ salaries
This as metro employees demanded an 18% salary increase as allegedly received by senior managers in 2017.
Employees working for the Tshwane metro will soon receive their new benchmarking salaries after an agreement on the preferred option was signed recently.
“This approved alignment is long overdue,” said Mayor Stevens Mokgalapa’s spokesperson, Omogolo Taunyane
This as metro employees demanded an 18% salary increase as allegedly received by senior managers in 2017.
Samwu regional secretary Mpho Tladinyane previously alleged that the annual salary of one senior Tshwane official had risen to R1.9-million from R1.1-million.
“Some were paid R400 000, others were paid R300 000. These are the people who earn a lot of money.”
Taunyane said the metro had finally established salary benchmarking.
She said: “The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu), the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) and the City of Tshwane reached an agreement on the preferred option and a collective agreement was signed.”
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She said this was due to a new salary structure for the metro being approved in council on 28 November 2019.
She said the three parties met at the South African Local Government Bargaining Council (SALGBC) in November 2018 to formalise the implementation of the collective agreement.
“This process was finalised in compliance with a SALGBC agreement concluded in July 2019,” She said.
Taunyane said due to the agreement with city workers over the benchmarking of salaries, the municipality salary structure would migrate from the adapted Patterson levels to TASK levels.
She said the TASK job evaluation system was the national system for local government.
“This migration will also bring parity to employees who were migrated into the administration during the establishment of the metropolitan municipality in 2011.”
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Taunyane said this decision was due to the basic principle for migration from one salary structure to the other.
She said the decision to migrate was as a result of a task team being established and led by the acting city manager to ensure that the decision by the cooperative governance and traditional affairs department (COGTA) of 2017 to upgrade the metro from Category 9 to Category 10 was implemented.
“The team was required to do a benchmarking exercise with other municipalities and produce a detailed report with all the findings and recommendations, and that report was served at Mayco in September 2019.”
The new salary structure is expected to be implemented in a phased approach after due consideration of the financial impact, backdated to 1 July 2017.
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“The adjustment for 2017/18 and 2018/19 will only apply to the basic salary and will be provided for in the next financial year,” Taunyane said.
She said the adjustment for 2019/20 would also be applicable to the basic salary and provisions would be made in the adjustments budget considered by the council after the mid-year assessment.
The agreement of the new salary benchmark comes after service delivery in Pretoria was crippled by protest action led by municipal workers affiliated to Samwu and Imatu.
The protesting municipal workers took to the streets, blocking and barricading them with municipal vehicles, rubbish, and allegedly damaging city property.
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