eThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda has insulted municipal workers, says union

eThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda’s comment that municipal workers were lazy is insulting to workers who work without resources.

According to the Municipal and Allied Trade Union of South Africa (Matusa) during a protest march to the Durban City Hall on Tuesday.

Matusa deputy general secretary Thulani Ngwenya told TimesLIVE that the march was to add more demands to those they had submitted in August last year, to which the city failed to respond. 

“It’s an edited memorandum of demands. We are adding more demands to the ones we made on the 15th of August 2022 that the city manager had not responded to. We wrote to him to come and accept a letter of demand with additional demands of the workers' grievances. We decided to do that in the form of a march, hence we’re here,” said Ngwenya.

Among their grievances is that the city did not recognise them as a union, despite their claims that they meet the minimum threshold of 15% of all municipal workers who are their members.

In their memorandum of demands addressed to city manager Musa Mbhele, the union alleged that he had issued a circular cautioning employees from associating themselves with the union.

“You have deliberately denied Matusa members their right to be represented by their union of choice despite arbitration award and court judgment presented to you, which shows delinquency on your part. You have left Matusa with no choice but to approach the labour court to find you in contempt of court and pay costs in your personal capacity. We demand that you, with immediate effect, withdraw all the unlawful circulars you circulated in this regard and allow our members to be represented by their union.”

The matter of the recognition of Matusa’s organisational rights is with the CCMA.

In November, the union was asked to complete a verification process before a verdict by an independent commissioner. The verdict was set for [Tuesday] but had to be postponed due to “unforeseen circumstances involving the commissioner,” according to Ngwenya.

The new dates are March 1 and 2.

They also expressed their displeasure with the issue of outsourcing work to subcontractors when there are employees who have the capacity to do that work.

“You have hundreds of employees from various departments employed by the municipality but have no work because you have outsourced it to different subcontractors. We demand that you end those subcontractors and eThekwini workers be given back the work they were employed for,” reads one demand.

They demanded that the municipality place all qualified apprentices in permanent posts.

With workers calling for Kaunda to step down after his alleged comments about municipal workers being lazy, Ngwenya reassured them that was not the case.

“You are not lazy, I’ve seen you working. Whoever says you’re lazy is insulting you,” he said.

“The mayor Mxolisi Kaunda is on record calling workers lazy and even threatening to dismiss them, forgetting you have outsourced their work plus you have failed to provide them with necessary tools. We demand that an audit be conducted to check where is the shortage of tools of work and they be provided immediately before you attempt to dismiss them.”

Mayoral spokesperson Mluleki Mtungwa said they had dealt with the issue of the mayor's remarks, but could not confirm whether the mayor had withdrawn or was still standing by the comment.

“The memorandum is addressed to the city manager so it would be unfair to respond to an issue in it through the media before the city manager responds,” he said.

Matusa demanded that all employees who had not been paid performance bonuses be paid immediately and called for all temporary/contract staff, including EPWP workers, to be employed full-time.

However, in the absence of the city manager and the speaker of council, the union refused to deliver the memorandum to a municipal official who had been sent instead.

It was agreed that Matusa leaders would meet the city manager on Friday to discuss their grievances and officially submit the memorandum to him.

TimesLIVE