BusinessLive reports that the SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) says calls by the National Treasury to urge municipalities to apply for exemption from a multiyear wage agreement will weaken unions’ bargaining position and set a bad precedent.  

Municipal workers are due for a wage increase of 6.25% on 1 July as part of the last leg of a three-year wage agreement signed at the SA Local Government Bargaining Council in 2018.  On Thursday, Samwu said it was “shocked and disgusted by the Treasury’s attempts to collapse” collective bargaining in the local government sector.  Apparently at a meeting of the bargaining council on Wednesday, a delegation from the Treasury “unashamedly repeated their call that municipalities should apply for exemption from the collective agreement”.  The delegation used the Covid-19 pandemic as the “motivation” for municipalities to renege on the wage agreement, Samwu general secretary Koena Ramotlou said.  The union said it expected all of the 257 municipalities to implement salary increases on 1 July, failing which Samwu members would strike to force them to comply with the binding collective agreement.  Karen Heese, an economist at Municipal IQ, commented that the coronavirus outbreak had “profoundly” compromised local government, and that local government finances had already been under strain before the pandemic began, with above-inflation cost drivers.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive
• Read too, Samwu concerned as City of Cape Town workers face unpaid leave due to Covid-19, at The Citizen

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