Samwu has called on Sol Plaatje Municipality to absorb current contract workers
THE SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) has threatened that its members will down tools if Sol Plaatje Municipality proceeds with the appointment of 28 new security guards instead of appointing existing contract workers.
The union opposes the appointments, which apparently started on Tuesday last week, and regards them as “illegal”, while also pointing out that the municipality continues to “plead poverty”.
It feels that the municipality should rather concentrate on the absorption of contract workers instead of bringing in new people.
Samwu has called on the municipality to pay outstanding bonuses and overtime, and to absorb all 341 contract workers, EPWP and acting positions before making new appointments.
Samwu local secretary Nomathamsanqa Banda said on Monday that human resources policies and procedures have not been followed, as adopted by council on June 6, 2018, as well as in regards to the memorandum of understanding between Samwu and Sol Plaatje Municipality signed on October 14, 2020.
“Sol Plaatje municipality is not financially stable to hire new people. Consultation was not done with the relevant stakeholders as councillors are doing human resource work,” said Banda. “The Local Labour Forum took a resolution that no new contracts will be allowed into the system until the 341 contract workers are absorbed permanently.”
Banda said that Samwu was not consulted regarding the appointments and “only saw a queue of people arriving at the municipality to sign contracts”.
“Samwu went to the extent of accommodating the municipality over the outstanding 6.25% salary increase payments for July, August, September and October 2020 because the municipality does not have money. If the municipality continues with these illegal appointments, they must pay the outstanding monies or Samwu members will exercise their rights,” Banda warned.
