ECR reports that COSATU’s Deputy President Michael Shingange has called on eThekwini Municipality to urgently implement equal pay for municipal workers doing the same jobs as their counterparts in other metros. Shingange was addressing hundreds of workers who marched to Durban City Hall on Tuesday as part of the trade union federation’s National Day of Action.

He says it is unacceptable that workers in Durban continue to earn less, despite performing identical duties to those in cities like Johannesburg and Tshwane. He has also criticised the dismissal and disciplining of some of the workers who went on a two-week strike in March last year over wage benchmarking. “It cannot be that an employer in South Africa dismisses workers for their right to strike, in particular when they’re being done [an] injustice, by not paying the equal pay that their counterparts are getting somewhere else. 

“You can dismiss workers for demanding their rights, but you shall draw no peace. You’ll have no stability for as long as workers know that what they are demanding is rightfully theirs, and it’s also legislation in law and it has been benchmarked.” Mayor Cyril Xaba was present to receive the workers’ memorandum.  

COSATU also raised concern over what it calls the weakening capacity of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.  Shingange says the problem’s left some workers stranded when seeking relief from unfair labour practices.  Shingange says the CCMA’s under-resourced and struggling to resolve cases quickly, leaving workers at the mercy of exploitative employers.  He’s urged government to strengthen the institution and appoint more commissioners to clear the growing backlog of cases.

“CMA is an institution that workers run into for a recourse when they are undermined by the employer. Since the COVID-19 workers who have been retrenched, they take months if not years to get a relief from CMA because the CMA has been decapacitated, but they say that it is because of the budget cuts.” An official from the CCMA’s Durban office received the federation’s memorandum of demands.

By Gcinokuhle Malinga