Buffalo City Metro has approved a total budget of R32m to pay its employees following a protracted battle over outstanding job evaluations.
The budget was approved during a closed session when the BCM council held a meeting in December.
City manager Andile Sihlahla tabled a report to brief and seek approval from the council following the violent strike that cost the metro millions in damages.
The strikers, led by Samwu, claimed they had lost pay when BCM failed to carry out job evaluations over the years.
Samwu accused the metro of reneging on an agreement to fully implement a job evaluation process in 2017.
Samwu regional secretary Zolani Ndlela said only 231 jobs out of more than 5,000 had been evaluated by the end of 2018.
Ndlela said that when the strike ended BCM started adjusting the salaries of some of the 231 workers whose jobs were evaluated. He said R9m was approved for the salary adjustments and payments in December, while R23m was approved for backpay dating back to 2015.
“The job evaluation was the root problem that caused the strike to begin with so we are confident that the employer will implement these resolutions as we don’t want problems again,” said Ndlela.
In his report Sihlahla said: “Implementation of the first batches of the job evaluation results up until June 30 2019 amounts to R9m and the backpay associated with these results amount to R23m.”
BCM spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya would not say when the process would be completed.
He would only say: “The process is very complex.
“Even the figures you have we cannot confirm up until the whole process is finalised, which the city is looking at speeding up as soon as possible”.
“The job evaluation process is a matter that affects employees of BCM and any matter that regards salaries and benefits of employees is confidential and it cannot be made available,” Ngwenya said.
“We are all aware of the sensitivities of this issue.
“It was one of the issues that was at the centre of the illegal strike action, and as such the city requests that it be given the time and space to deal with the matter within its internally agreed systems,” the spokesperson said...