Jubie Matlou
The Johannesburg City Council was on a collision course with the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) this week over its “Igoli 2002” masterplan, creating a dispute that could chart the way the African National Congress settles its differences with its alliance partners.
The transformation scheme – which will entail a privatisation drive unveiled this week – is likely to be a precedent for the way in which the government cuts the civil service.
The council announced plans this week to sell Rand Airport, Metro Gas and the Johannesburg Stadium.
The operations that the council intends to commercialise include water and sanitation utility, electricity utility and management contract, waste management utility, roads and storm water agency, parks and cemetery agency, the Civic Theatre, the Johannesburg zoo, the Metro Bus Service, and the Fresh Produce Market. The council is also planning to set up a property management company.
According to Makgane Thobejane, the council’s labour relations specialist, the council plans to cut more than 40% of the workforce: it will be left with about 15 000 employees, out of a total of 27 000, once the privatisation and “corporatisation” drive has been completed.
The council is determined to see through this restructuring process even if it means the eventual retrenchment of 12E000 employees. It is proposing a three-year job security offer, in an attempt to get the unions on board. The unions have so far rejected the proposal, but council employees are said to be more willing to accept the offer. All of which, say some council sources, sets the scene for the type of battle that is likely to be played out in the next few years.
The South African Communist Party this week entered the fray, expressing concern about the breakdown of the mediation process between Samwu and the municipality over Igoli 2002. “This creates a completely unhealthy climate not only in terms of labour relations in the municipality, but also continues to cast a dark shadow over the much-needed transformation of Greater Johannesburg,” the SACP said, adding: “There can be no transformation of any of our local government structures without adequate consultative processes, nor through attempts to bulldoze local government transformation despite very serious concerns being expressed by some of the key stakeholders.
Such an approach is a serious violation of the ANC’s and alliance’s approach to the transformation and restructuring process in this transition,” it warned.
City manager Ketso Gordhan says all 27 000 jobs will be guaranteed for the next three years. “Any employee in the country has no guarantee that s/he will have their jobs next year.
“To reassure people that this plan is not about firing people, we are offering an employment guarantee of three years.
“I think there are measures that are being considered at national government level about trimming the public service, but this is not part of that exercise,” Gordhan says.
However, Victor Mhlongo, a Samwu representative, calls Gordhan’s three-year job security offer “a smokescreen. The situation of employees at Metro Gas is such that the council advised them to get financial advisers in terms of their benefits, and in essence, this implies that once Metro Gas is sold off, they will have to be re-employed.”
Samwu has withdrawn from all negotiations regarding Igoli 2002, and is planning protest action because the council has begun to implement the plan before talks between the two parties have been concluded.
The 15 000 employees that will remain will serve the council’s core functions, namely the provision of health and environmental services, arts and cultural services such as museums and libraries, community services, recreational facilities and services to the general public. The administrative needs of the council include human resources, information technology, as well as legal and financial services.
The rest – water and sanitation, waste management, electricity, roads and storm water, parks and cemeteries – will be outsourced to public utilities to be created by the council once the Municipal Systems Bill is enacted into law sometime this year.
Twelve thousand council employees will be transferred to the 10 corporatised public utilities, and 170 to the three privatised companies that the council will sell off by end of March.
“Even in relation to the corporate entities that will be created for water and sanitation, for instance, I don’t think that after the three years that the council talks about, many of the employees would still have their jobs,” Mhlongo says.
Recent government policy has run into a direct collision with labour, particularly with regard to the sale of state enterprises and their impact on job security.
The Johan-nesburg council says Igoli 2002 has turned the city’s financial position around from an accumulated deficit of R338- million and R154-million in the financial years 1997/98 and 1998/99 respectively, to a zero deficit in the current financial year. The council plans to increase its capital budget for infrastructure development from R390-million to half-a- billion rands next year.