The City of Johannesburg council is still willing to negotiate with the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) to resolve the ongoing Metrobus strike, the municipality said on Wednesday.
Talks aimed at ending the bus strike reached a stalemate on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Samwu accused the municipality of negotiating in bad faith but municipal spokesperson Gabu Tugwana dismissed the allegations as misleading.
Samwu branch secretary Dumisani Langa claimed that the municipality had rejected its own proposal after the two parties resumed talks on Friday.
Langa said city manager Mavela Dlamini introduced a new negotiating team from the municipality on Friday.
Dlamini assured the union on Friday that the new delegation had the full mandate to negotiate and reach an agreement, said Langa.
He said the two parties met on Monday and the municipal delegation offered that dismissed shop stewards be reinstated and a disciplinary hearing would be convened to hear the merits of the allegations against them.
He said they also offered the reinstatement of the whole agreement regulating sick leave and the formation of a two-aside committee to check if all 19 dismissed employees’ verdicts were altered outside the disciplinary hearing, as alleged by Samwu.
Langa said they left the meeting to sell the offer to their members.
”We requested management to put the above issues in a collective-agreement format so that if we have managed to sell it to members we will come to sign an agreement that will resolve the strike action.”
He said their members accepted the offer and mandated them to sign the agreement.
On Tuesday, Samwu representatives were told by the municipal delegation that Dlamini rejected the proposal.
The municipal negotiators told them that the dismissed shop stewards would not be reinstated and all agreements that were applicable within the municipality would be binding on Metrobus.
He said on the issue of the 19 dismissed workers that the union was informed that they must follow the dispute resolution mechanism as envisaged in the Labour Relations Act.
Langa said they informed the negotiators that they were not happy because they hoped to reach an agreement on the initial offer.
”We pleaded with them to request the city manager to reconsider his stance because we thought their position was going to end the ongoing industrial action at Metrobus,” said Langa.
Tugwana said municipal negotiators did not put an offer as claimed by Langa.
He said that Samwu negotiators were asked to forward issues that they wanted to be discussed and substantiate those matters.
”The union never substantiated these matters, and that is why they were rejected after they were evaluated.”
Tugwana said the dismissed workers could not be reinstated because their cases were not similar and the merits of the cases needed to be assessed separately.
The municipality said 21 violent incidents had been recorded since the strike started, including murder, attempted murder, vandalism, armed robbery, intimidation and other incidents.
”The council condemns the use of violence during the strike,” the municipality said in a statement.
It said only 91 workers of the 971 Metrobus workforce were on strike at the time the municipality suspended bus services. — Sapa