Union leaders will meet over the weekend to discuss the way forward in a strike that has left municipal workers without pay for a week.
The strike, which has been marked by clashes with the police and almost 150 arrests, is in support of workers’ demands for an 8% pay increase, opposed to the 6% already imposed by their employers, the South African Local Government Association (Salga).
Both the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) said they are still considering a mediator’s proposal that both sides shift their demands.
This includes an across-the-board increase of 6% with an additional 1,5% adjustment, effective from February 1 2006, to the wages of all workers earning below R4 792 per month.
Imatu said there is concern over the minimum wage and medical benefits, but it is weighing up all its options.
Although its members are not on strike, they agreed that they would not do the jobs of Samwu members who are on strike, general secretary Clive Dunstan said.
The KwaZulu-Natal branch of Samwu said most members in the province had returned to work by Friday.
Only a handful of workers in Durban wanted to continue their industrial action because ”there is no significant move on the employers’ wage offer”, spokesperson Jaycee Ncanana said.
Meanwhile, the Cape Town city council obtained an interdict preventing strikers from intimidating and harassing city employees and placing limits on where they may picket.
This followed clashes earlier in the week where police had to use rubber bullets to control the crowd, which had also turned on the media.
The South African National Editors’ Forum condemned the attacks on the media, saying: ”The labour movement is an essential part of South African society and to cover it properly, journalists need to be assured that they will be safe to do their jobs.”
Samwu was ordered to pay the costs of the court action.
A march planned for Cape Town was cancelled earlier on Friday, with union leaders saying that workers were being consulted.
Pickets throughout the country went relatively peacefully apart from the overturning of bins in some centres.
In Bloemfontein, a monument in front of the municipal offices was damaged, and in Johannesburg and Pretoria police said the pickets went off peacefully.
There is no clarity yet on when full municipal services will resume, with many households still holding waste not collected during the past week. — Sapa