COSATU affiliate, the SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu), will demand a R4 000 salary increase for its members in the country’s 257 municipalities and their entities when wage negotiations start later this year.
The union, which has over 160 000 members, announced the move at the end of its four-day national collective bargaining conference in Johannesburg on Thursday.
According to Samwu, the conference has resolved that the union should negotiate a R4 000 across the board salary increase. It said that it was taking into account the local government sector’s huge salary gap that needs to be narrowed to improve workers’ standards of living.
Samwu also said the food basket and public transport keep increasing.
The union will also negotiate a single year agreement in order to be constantly in touch with workers and ensure that the principle of worker control is entrenched.
”A single year agreement will also ensure that workers do not lose out on their real salary increase as a result of inflation,” Samwu said.
It believes that single-year agreements will be in the interest of labour stability in the sector as the future appears uncertain. Samwu said its members can no longer be tied to multi-year agreements not in their interest, that do not fundamentally change their lives.
The union, which also represents workers in the country’s 12 water boards, will table similar demands in the Amanzi Bargaining Council (ABC). Salary agreements signed at the ABC and the Local Government Bargaining Council will lapse at the end of June paving the wave for a fresh round of negotiations.
Last year, municipal workers received 6.25% salary increases.
POLITICAL BUREAU