29 April 2015 SAMWU rejects SALGA's ridiculous Wage and Salary Offer The South African Municipal Workers' Union (SAMWU) has rejected the latest wages and salary offer presented by SALGA at the SALGBC in the 2nd round of negotiations which concluded on the 23rd April 2015. SALGA had revised its previous offer of 4.4% increase to 5.4%. We reject this ridiculous offer as it is still way below our demands. There has been no real movement on the part of SALGA. SALGA has not shown commitment to negotiate in good faith on these negotiations. Instead they have been dragging their feet to the negotiating table. We want to ensure that a new agreement is reached before the current main collective agreement lapses, however this can only be done if there is commitment from both sides of the table. It seems as though SALGA is only interested in ensuring that unions commit to the signing of the Service Charter while neglecting bread and butter issues of our members. Our mandate is for a single year agreement, yet SALGA continues to want to ensure that workers are tied to a 3 year agreement which has no real gains or benefits for them. The employer has further proposed that the minimum wage in the sector be R5925 which we believe is way too little to address the dire financial strain that municipal workers continue to find themselves in, a situation which is not of their own making. SALGA has also not moved on our demand of an across the board housing allowance for all municipal employees and insists on giving housing allowance to those who can produce evidence that they have current bond with a financial institution. Our argument is that housing allowance should be extended to all employees as a result of the slave wages that SALGA gives to its employees. What bond would an employee with a salary of R5621 get? This argument by SALGA also disadvantages employees who are unable to get financial assistance as a result of their poor credit profiles. Undoubtedly SALGA is a horrible employer, an employer that does not value or appreciate its employees. Municipal workers are starving while SALGA bosses continue to be highly overpaid, its principals have just recently received an increase of over R60 000 an amount which is more than the annual salary of municipal workers. SALGA cannot also justify the highly inflated annual salary of R3.8 million that its CEO Xolile George receives, a salary which he clearly does not deserve given the fact that SALGA principals have failed to stabilise the country's municipalities. The third round of negotiations will be held on the 18th and 19th May. We urge SALGA to come and negotiate with us in good faith and show commitment that they want an agreement reached before the current main collective agreement expires. Issued by SAMWU Head Office Papikie Mohale National Media Officer South African Municipal Workers' Union 84 Fredericks Street Johannesburg 2001 M: 060 416 6661 T: 011 100 2615 E: [email protected] -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
