Durban — The KwaZulu-Natal Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has expressed joy over the reinstatement of 121 Ugu Municipality workers.
The workers were reinstated on Tuesday with 12 months back pay, while all parties involved have agreed to continue negotiating regarding the issue of the update of pension benefits.
This comes after the workers were dismissed in March 2020 when they objected to an unfair dismissal of their union shop stewards. It is alleged that they argued that shop stewards were being victimised for speaking out against alleged maladministration and corruption in the council.
According to Cosatu, since then, the federation, working with the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu), had been at the forefront of the efforts to ensure the workers were reinstated.
Cosatu said this followed another victory for the federation and Samwu that saw it successfully negotiate the reinstatement of 223 Newcastle municipal workers that were dismissed.
KZN secretary Edwin Mkhize said they were grateful that the campaign for reinstatement had yielded positive outcomes.
He said Cosatu had argued that the matter could have been better handled by those in authority.
Mkhize urged the union’s members to prioritise service delivery to the poor communities that relied on them for their survival.
He said Cosatu would continue to work with Samwu to ensure that workers’ issues were professionally and better handled by management of municipalities.
“Our founding principle that ‘An injury to one, is an injury to all’ remains true today as it was 36 years ago. We will continue to work with our unions to improve our service to our members and create fair and just workplaces where worker’s rights are respected,” he said.
Daily News
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