Pretoria - The South African Municipal Union (Samwu) and the South African Local Government Association (Salga) are to meet today to discuss a way forward about the ongoing strike action.
This comes after the Labour Court judge ruled on Tuesday that Salga's case was completely without merit and was withdrawn from the court roll. Salga had launched an urgent court application to prevent municipal workers from a nationwide strike.
Striking workers are calling on Salga to implement a uniform job grading system and to ban the use of external lawyers during disciplinary procedures.
Samwu is hopeful that today's talks will be more constructive and that a solution will be found.
Samwu's National Bargaining Officer Dale Fobes told BuaNews that should there be no agreement reached, the strike will continue. "Our position has been that we were always open for talks and we are still open for negotiations," Fobes said.
Salga spokesperson Melisa Kentane told BuaNews that they were also hoping to resolve the dispute amicable. "We really want to resolve the matter. We have the interest of the workers at heart and we also want to ensure that workers are taken care of," she said.
In a bid to minimise the impact of the strike, the City of Johannesburg, the City of Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and the Nelson Mandela Metro had put in place contingency plans in place to ensure that service delivers is not completely hampered.
