GroundUp reports that the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) has ruled that a group of former Dippin Blu Racing horse groomers from Port Elizabeth are entitled to claim unemployment benefits.
Representing the grooms on Friday, Malibongwe Kayiyane of the Democratised Transport Logistics and Allied Workers Union said that the commissioner ruled that all of the dismissed workers could get their UIF and that on 3 December such an agreement would be signed with the employer. The group first took the matter of their dismissals to the CCMA in March. But then they decided to drop the complaint so that they could apply for UIF, which they couldn’t do as a case was pending at the CCMA. In September, they discovered that the Department of Employment and Labour’s system showed that they had absconded from work, making them ineligible for UIF. Then on 17 September, the grooms made national headlines when violent protests broke out at Dippin Blu Racing and the grooms reopened their CCMA complaint. The protest stemmed from an incident in February in which a worker injured a horse. The stable owner claimed the worker stabbed the horse in the neck, but the grooms disputed this, saying the worker had mistakenly cut the horse’s ear. In the ensuing dispute the worker and 39 others were fired.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Mkhuseli Sizani at TimesLIVE
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