THE National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) has filed court papers with the Labour Court in a desperate attempt to force the ANC to pay salaries to striking staff workers.
The union filed papers on 31 January, asking the court to order the ANC to pay the outstanding salaries of its workers.
The union’s general-secretary Zola Saphetha says they believe the decision to take the ANC to court is right and correct.
“On the papers, as submitted by the union for and on behalf of its members and staff in general of the ANC, we demand that the service tendered by workers must be remunerated immediately. Unfortunately, the straw that broke the camel’s back was when Christmas passed with no salaries paid.”
Saphetha has also questioned the ANC’s decision to forge ahead with its January 8 celebrations despite not being able to pay salaries.
“It is the fact that ANC has deliberately failed and elected not to honour its contractual obligations since October 2021 which made workers to go to December Festive and Christmas without any salary, but the ANC continued to gear to January 2022 celebrations, cutting cakes as if all is well and sorted with their employees.”
The ANC has been given 14 days to reply to Nehawu’s court papers.
The governing party owes its workers three months’ salaries.
The party has been struggling for months to meet its salary obligations because of a shortage of funding and poor crowd funding opportunities.
ANC staffers are also owed unemployment fund contributions and provident fund contributions which have not been paid in years.
Currently, workers have decided to stay away from work.
Nehawu is a member of Cosatu, which is an alliance partner of the ANC.
Nehawu said ANC workers were struggling to survive.
“These workers are going through a sad and traumatising period as a direct result of failures of the ANC to honour and fulfil its contractual obligations entered into.”
“The late [payment of] salaries has resulted in our members and workers losing all that they have worked for over years, as they have faced the stark reality of banks/financial institutions repossessing their homes, cars, etc. as a result of defaulting payments brought about by the failure [of paying] salaries on time by the ANC,” Saphetha said.
At the ANC’s January 8 address, party president Cyril Ramaphosa said ANC officials would quickly resolve the payment issue by looking at funding options.
Referring to Ramaphosa’s statement, Nehawu said the ANC had ignored workers who had sacrificed their lives to serve the party. The staffers also faced the likelihood of retrenchment, according to the union.
“This inhuman act by the ANC undermines the dignity of its workers who kept the same ANC going, through and through, by sacrificing their lives in favour of the ANC.
“The matter is at the Labour Court now, and as the union and staff, we have tried everything possible to find an amicable solution, but to no avail and at worst, these workers were not treated with the dignity they deserved,” the union said.
- * Inside Politics
