Tshwane to monitor 'disappearance' of non-striking workers
The City of Tshwane has begun monitoring attendance in an effort to identify employees who fail to report for duty even though they are not on strike.
This is the latest attempt by the city to crack down on the municipal workers who have been on an illegal strike since July over non-payment of salary increases.
To date, 122 employees have been dismissed.
The strike, which is led by the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu), has led to an interruption in the delivery of services in the city, including electricity outage repairs, water restoration, and refuse removal.
Samwu has since asked its members to return to work.
City spokesperson Selby Bokaba says attendance registers indicate a pattern where employees sign in and sign off in the morning and afternoon but then disappear or don’t execute their functions.
"After observing this disturbing pattern initially in regions 1, 3, 4, 6 and 7, the city leadership resolved to broaden the task of analysing the attendance registers across all the city’s seven regions to identify the employees who are physically at work but don’t do the work for which they get paid.
"The salaries of the affected employees will be stopped and/or docked on a pro-rata basis. Hundreds of employees have already been identified to be reporting for duty but not doing any work. An employee who withholds their labour is considered to still be on strike."
The city has since applied for the exemption at the local bargaining council to be exempted from paying salary increases on the grounds of affordability.
The application is expected to be heard on 30 August.
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