Strike escalates

As strike action at the Makhado Municipality entered its third week, residents’ patience with the Makhado Municipality and striking union members is wearing thin.

On Monday, 11 April, municipal spokesperson Mr Louis Bobodi stated that members of the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (IMATU) had embarked on a go-slow in protest of the benchmarking of salaries process.

The issue of benchmarking served before Council on 8 October last year with the aim of “standardizing” employees' salaries in municipalities. However, the process hit a snag when, after Council had indicated to workers that their salaries would be benchmarked with those of the Greater Tzaneen Municipality, Council realized that they were not in the financial position to afford such a dramatic increase in their salary bill. Council then took a resolution that the benchmarking of salaries should be done through job evaluation under the auspices of the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), with Council only offering an ex-gratia amount of R15 000, spread over three years, for each employee in lieu of the + 10 years’ non-completion of the job evaluation process by SALGA. This outraged union members, who argued that it was unfair to couple the issue of benchmarking of salaries with that of SALGA’s job-evaluation project – a project that SALGA has been unable to complete since 2004. They also felt that the promise of R15 000 spread over three years for each employee meant nothing to them, as they might get the first R5 000 this year, but not next year as there was a clause that the payment of the R15 000 over three years would be stopped as soon as the job evaluation process was complete.

As union members’ frustration grew, so too did the strike action escalate, accompanied by allegations of deliberate sabotaging of municipal infrastructure and non-striking union members' receiving death threats. Services mostly affected by the go-slow action are those of electricity supply, water supply and waste removal – all listed as essential services in accordance with the Labour Relations Act. It was rumoured that the municipality had called an emergency meeting on Friday, 22 April, to take a decision on whether or not to appoint private contractors, at extra cost to the taxpayer amidst an illegal protest action, to deliver essential services.

The past week, residents had to endure continual power outages and water shortages. Farmers along the Vivo electrical distribution line went without power for two days last week. Along the Levubu line the situation was as bad, with some parts of this farming community (specifically the southern and eastern part) going without electricity for most of the weekend since Friday. “The situation has become intolerable. The action borders on plain criminality,” said Mr Stephen Hoffman, chairperson of the Soutpansberg District Agricultural Union. He said many farmers had already reported crop losses because cold rooms could not function as a result of prolonged power outages.

Especially banana famers have suffered losses running into thousands of rands. Similar reports are coming in from farmers in the Vivo area. Hoffman said that they viewed the current strike action as economic sabotage because their members suffered severe financial losses. “Direct losses due to food and product losses in cold storage already amount to hundreds of thousands of rands, while the damage done to crops due to farmers' not being able to irrigate their land will only be visible later. Initial estimates indicate million of rands in losses,” Hoffman said.

To add insult to injury, Hoffman said, it would seem that striking municipal workers themselves were sabotaging municipal infrastructure to give their cause momentum. This, he said, was the case on the electricity supply line between Louis Trichardt and Elim, as well as the supply line between Louis Trichardt and Vivo in Tshikota. Last week, power line poles in Tshikota were deliberately set alight. On the Elim line, said Hoffman, electrical faults were apparently repaired, only for thugs to return the next day to cut the poles off and setting them alight again. Hoffman demanded that the municipality push for criminal charges to be laid against union members who sabotaged municipal infrastructure. He said that their modus operandi was similar to that of a couple of years ago during a previous SAMWU strike. He said that the municipal management then promised them that charges would be laid, but that this had never happened. “I seriously think that this sabotage is politically motivated, based on the reluctance of the people in charge to act,” Hoffman said.

Bobodi confirmed on Monday that the strike action was still in full force. “But not all employees are participating … we have to put on record that IMATU members are not taking part,” Bobodi said.

Bobodi was also asked what action the municipality had taken over the past two weeks to put a stop to the illegal strike action. On 11 April he confirmed that the strike action was unprotected, stating that a special Council meeting would be called to consider the filing of an application to declare the strike unprotected, with the necessary consequences, which include disciplinary hearings and lock-outs. In this regard, Bobodi said, they had filed such an application on Monday.

As for the alleged emergency meeting on Friday, Bobodi said that he was not aware of such a meeting. He did, however, indicate that, on Thursday last week, Council had approved a decision to appoint contractors to render essential services. “Contractors were appointed to render the following services: Refuse removal to collect refuse in town, which started on Saturday, an electrical contractor for the repair of damaged transmission lines at Levubu and Mara, and Vhembe District Municipality has appointed a service provider to deal with water supply issues. Today [Monday] the striking management meeting requested the directorate to make submission to consider municipal services that are considered essential,” Bobodi said.

With regard to the extent of criminality associated with the current strike action, Bobodi said that they were aware of several incidents of sabotage. “The Levubu and Mara areas were negatively affected and electrical poles were cut around the Rondebosch area. The water reticulation system was also tampered with,” Bobodi said. As for Hoffman’s demand that criminal charges be laid, Bobodi confirmed that criminal charges had been laid at the Makhado SAPS (CAS 183/4/2016 and CAS 194/4/2016).

The big question now is surely when this nasty strike action will end. “As to when the strike action will come to an end, you can just check with the striking workers themselves. Council has resolved to withdraw the R 15 000 ex-gratia amount which was the root cause of the strike. We have gone to court to declare the strike unlawful, unprocedural and unprotected. We will continue to apply the no-work, no-pay policy,” Bobodi said.

News - Date: 02 May 2016

Andries van Zyl

Andries joined the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror in April 1993 as a darkroom assistant. Within a couple of months he moved over to the production side of the newspaper and eventually doubled as a reporter. In 1995 he left the newspaper group and travelled overseas for a couple of months. In 1996, Andries rejoined the Zoutpansberger as a reporter. In August 2002, he was appointed as News Editor of the Zoutpansberger, a position he holds until today.

Email: [email protected]