Press Statement
4th December 2000
4pm

Strike in Johannesburg suspended

The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) have decided to temporarily suspend their strike in Johannesburg. The unions are going to fast-track a minimum level agreement on essential services over the next few weeks before resuming the strike.

The decision was made after council threatened to dismiss all workers in terms of the Labour Relations Act clause which prohibits essential service workers from striking.

The unions have a national agreement which stipulates that most municipal workers may strike if a skeleton level of essential services are kept running. This skeleton level is supposed to be determined by local level agreements which are then ratified by the Bargaining Council. The unions do have a local level agreement in place in Johannesburg but it has not yet been ratified by the National Bargaining Council.

Although the unions had agreed to provide a skeleton level of emergency services throughout the strike, Council decided to throw the full weight of the LRA at the unions and forbade all workers from striking. For example, Council would happily have fired all workers in a water department including those who perform administrative functions or who sweep the floors inside the depot - clearly not life sustaining tasks.

Essential service workers also indicated that they would rather not be working while their fellow municipal workers were on strike, and would prefer to strike en masse once minor technicalities had been resolved.

"We are going to try our best to conclude a minimum level agreement before the New Year or as soon as possible thereafter. If such an agreement is in place and our demands still have not been met, then the unions will be going out on strike again," said SAMWU General Secretary Roger Ronnie.

The unions are determined to exercise their constitutional right to strike and could put forward a legal challenge to the essential services clause in the LRA. SAMWU feels that blocking a strike by essential service workers assumes that all citizens have an equitable access, whereas Johannesburg's essential services are clearly only for the benefit of a privileged section of the community.

For example, only five ambulances serve the millions living in Johannesburg since this service was privatised a few years ago. And Johannesburg's townships are normally strewn with garbage as council refuses to provide them with a decent and consistent level of service.

There has been no agreement reached with the council in any of the negotiations. All of the unions demands remain the same. "All of IMATU and SAMWU's estimated 25 thousand strong workforce supported the strike over the past three days. Workers are as committed as ever to pursuing this matter through industrial action," said Ronnie.

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