SAMWU blasts uMhlathuze over unpaid overtime, new jobs
Workers union SAMWU has called out uMhlathuze Municipality for advertising new job vacancies while employees are still owed for overtime.
The union says the external recruitment carries a potential remuneration cost of over 16 million.
It says it's being carried out while current employees are receiving short pay and aren't being paid for overtime.
The union's Zandile Gumede says the workers are still owed remuneration from the past three years.
"We have been going back and forth. Even the matter was referred to the bargaining council. We warn the case forcing the employer to pay all these employees. However, that has not been done since to date. Tthey embarked on a peaceful strike which lasted for 14 days. One of their demands."
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Was for those employees who are still waiting for their money to be paid. However, that has not happened. They're saying they don't have money, pay the employees, but they said they decided to advertise vacancies."
Gumede says while they aren't against new municipal recruits, they also want current employees prioritised.
Meanwhile the deputy city manager Thokozani Nsele says they issue of payments will be resolved before the end of this month.
But he says the jobs they've advertised are for critical positions.
"We are advertising in order to fill the critical positions that is addressing directly or indirectly service delivery, we have to fill in those positions because they are critical. You can imagine an institution big as us not having an HR manager, and we are citing the reason that no, we can't have a HR manager because we are owing few employees over time. Not all of them, it's just a few.
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