An intense row between parliamentary staff and management has been lent additional heat by the exclusion on “representivity” grounds of several coloured employees from the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Freedom Charter in Kliptown last month.
According to parliamentary sources, the staffing plan for the People’s Assembly in Kliptown from June 24 to June 27 was altered one day before employees in the projects and public education offices, as well as the security section, were meant to leave Cape Town for Soweto. Several coloured staff, who had been intimately involved in planning the event, were removed from the list and replaced by Africans. On querying the change, they were told by managers that the changes had been made in order to ensure that the delegation reflected the demographics of the country.
National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) secretary in Parliament, Safia Isaacs, was among those excluded. She has since begun official grievance procedures over the issue.
Speaking in her Nehawu capacity, Isaacs told the Mail & Guardian it was particularly inappropriate that Parliament should invoke demographics in this instance, when it had no employment equity plan.
“It is sad that 10 years on Parliament has no employment equity plan, but employees should not be made the victims of a problem in appointment procedures,” she said.
The race row is the latest in a series of increasingly acrimonious battles between Parliament and the union since the current parliamentary secretary, ZK Dingani, took over administrative functions at the legislature last May.
But staff say the background to the tensions is the lengthy and unresolved restructuring of the parliamentary service, which they worry may lead to retrenchments and redeployments.
Two matters are currently before the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration. One deals with conditions of service, an issue over which Parliament and the union have deadlocked. Dingani informed staff in April that Parliament’s final offer would be unilaterally implemented for non-union employees.
The other matter deals with unilateral changes to employment policies, about which Isaacs says staff have not been adequately consulted or even informed, despite the fact that these policies can be central to disciplinary proceedings.
The union is also unhappy about managerial appointments made without proper advertising, and in defiance of procedures requiring the presence of staff representatives in the assessment process.
A letter to speaker of the National Assembly Baleka Mbete requesting her intervention has apparently produced no results, and a planned “engagement summit” to discuss reconciliation moves has not materialised because, Isaacs says, Parliament has failed to agree on a date.
Many staff members appear to feel strongly that they have no line of communication to senior management, and that middle managers are inadequately prepared to deal with the complex human resources issues arising from the restructuring process.
Parliament’s chief operations officer, Tango Lamani, says it is to be expected that these kinds of issues will arise in any environment that is transforming, but that Parliament would prefer to deal with them internally rather than commenting.
“It is unfortunate that some individuals within the parliamentary service saw it fit to run to the media instead of addressing these issues internally,” he said, adding that Dingani and management had generally provided various channels for staff to raise their concerns.