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Tuesday, 23 April 2019 06:35

Sowetan reports that the Free State’s Kopanong local municipality has failed to pay an estimated R58m in pension fund contributions collected from municipal workers over the past six years to the workers’ pension fund. This emerged from an investigation by the Pension Funds Adjudicator following complaints by three of the many affected municipal workers. Your employer is obliged to pay over the contributions it collects from your salary as well the employer contributions (that form part of your salary package) to your pension fund. But many employers fail to do so, contravening the Pension Funds Act in what amounts to theft of employees’ money.

And the failure of the board of trustees and the administrator of the South African Local Authorities Pension Fund, Fairsure Administration, to take action to force the Kopanong municipality to pay over the money has annoyed adjudicator Muvhango Lukhaimane, who has been campaigning against trustees and administrators who do nothing to stop employers who plunder members’ savings. In the Kopanong case, Fairsure told the adjudicator that the municipality had not paid contributions since March 2013 even though it sent monthly communiques to the municipality regarding the unpaid contributions. Lukhaimane says Fairsure indicated it was discussing the matter with a lawyer, but it did not appear to have taken any legal steps against the municipality.

The adjudicator says the fund’s trustees ought to have advised the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, which regulates the financial services industry, of the municipality’s failure to pay contributions and should have taken action to remedy the nonpayment. Lukhaimane has also been critical of the fund for failing to get the name of the person at the municipality who could be held personally liable for the nonpayment of contributions and whose assets could be attached if the money was not paid over.

The fund needs to be proactive to ensure accountability and to better protect the interests of members, she adds. The administrator was unable to confirm arrear contributions for each individual member of the fund and could only say that the municipality was in arrears to the tune of R58.4m.

You have the right to receive regular information about your pension fund benefits from your fund. The rules governing contributions, the rate at which contributions must be deducted, and how often they must be paid to your fund are contained in the rules of your pension fund which the adjudicator describes as “supreme” and “binding on officials, members, shareholders and beneficiaries of a fund”. Lukhaimane has ordered the municipality to provide the fund with contribution schedules for the employees who complained to her within two weeks of the determination. She has also ordered the municipality to pay the members’ arrears contributions to the fund, with interest, so that the fund could update the records of the affected members. The fund was further ordered to provide the members with a breakdown of their contributions and their latest benefit statements within eight weeks of the determination and to continue to provide benefit statements as long as they remained with the fund. The municipality did not respond when the adjudicator sent it the complaints.

The original of this report by Charlene Steenkamp appeared on page 18 of Sowetan of 18 April 2019

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Tuesday, 16 April 2019 04:42

Business Times reports that Sibanye-Stillwater's plans to take over Lonmin and become the world's largest platinum producer will not be derailed by trade unions, CEO Neal Froneman said last week.

Though the deal will give his company more exposure to the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (Amcu), Froneman is not shying away.

"We've just shown them that in two days we can raise R4bn, which gives us R10bn on the balance sheet. It's a little bit of a message to the unions as well that we can access money under the right conditions," he said.

Sibanye tapped shareholders for nearly R2bn and got almost as much from a forward gold sale arrangement with Citibank.

Amcu has been on strike at Sibanye's gold operations for almost five months, casting a shadow over the upcoming wage negotiations in the platinum sector, where it is the dominant union. In 2014 Amcu dragged out a strike in the platinum sector for five months.

"[Even] if the strike continues, and potentially there's another strike in [platinum] they [Sibanye] can stay afloat," said Mergence Investment Managers analyst Thobela Bixa.

Sibanye's US business could be its most useful weapon. Two years ago Sibanye acquired Stillwater, a platinum group metals producer. Froneman said: "I think that further balance sheet strengthening will come from cash flow generation, more specifically out of our US business, which is actually performing quite well at the moment."

Sibanye started off as a South African gold producer when it was spun out of Gold Fields in 2013. It has since built a portfolio of platinum assets, buying some of Anglo American Platinum's mines as well as Aquarius Platinum.

The deal with Lonmin — an all-share offer valued at around R5.2bn — will give it capacity to comfortably produce more than 2-million ounces of platinum a year, making it the world's largest miner of the metal.

But gold has been a problem, mostly due to the strike. Amcu is not the majority union at Sibanye's gold operations, according to an independent verification process.

Amcu previously said the process was flawed. On Friday Amcu president Joseph Mathunjwa said the strike would continue.

Old Mutual Invest analyst Meryl Pick sees Amcu's hard line at Sibanye's gold mining business as a "power play more about the platinum assets. The strike in gold seems to have been a warning shot by Amcu."

The union has appealed the decision by competition authorities to approve Sibanye's takeover of Lonmin. And it wants a two-year moratorium on job cuts. Froneman and analysts see the deal going through. He is not known for backing down. "If we have to hold out, we'll hold out for as long as is needed."

The original of this report by Ntando Thukwana and TJ Strydom appeared on page 1 of Sunday Times Business Times of 14 April 2019

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Thursday, 11 April 2019 12:01

The Sunday Independent reports that employees of Johannesburg City Library are up in arms over what they claim is the failure by their employer to stick to the agreement reached with their union last year.

The staff members, who include librarians, assistants and general workers, have alleged the City of Johannesburg has breached a settlement agreement reached with the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu).

The council runs between 90 and 100 libraries in greater Joburg.

Disgruntled workers say they have not been paid for overtime worked since operating hours were extended from 9am-1pm to 9am-5pm on July 4, 2017, by mayor Herman Mashaba.

They are also demanding the refunding of deductions taken from their salaries when they refused to work on Saturdays because the city was not calculating their overtime rates on scales that they were happy with.

Workers have sent a letter to the city in which they accuse the employer of violating parts of a settlement agreement reached on November 6, 2018, with Imatu.

At the time of publishing 7 Apruil), The Sunday Independent had not received a response from city manager Dr Ndivhoniswani Lukhwareni to questions sent by e-mail via spokesperson Nthatisi Modingoane.

Since the breaches allegedly occurred before March 13, 2019, in terms of the settlement, the union has the right to rally its members to go on strike.

Imatu Joburg regional chairperson Mark-Lee Gericke could not be reached for comment after several attempts to reach him proved futile.

However, one staffer close to the matter, who insisted on anonymity, confirmed, “No, we are not planning a strike.”

Workers also accuse the city of violations relating to six-day employees who were not remunerated with overtime pay for working extended Saturday hours beyond the 45-hour week, as stipulated by section 35(2)(a) and (b)of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act of 1997. They also claim money deducted from salaries in March-May 2018 was not reimbursed, the city failing to refund money docked from employee salaries during the period August 1, 2018-October 31, 2018, and November 2018. Salaries being docked by the city in violation of clause 5.1.9 of the November settlement, which stated: “The employer undertakes not to process any salary deductions for the period of 1 August 2018 to 31 October 2018.”

The city is also accused of breaking its commitment to repay all money docked from employee salaries by no later than January 31, 2019, which staffers say has not happened.

“Payments did not reflect on 31st January 2019 pay slips as per agreement until staff went to HR to investigate,” reads the letter.

The November settlement – clause 5.1.16 – also spelt out that there will be “no victimisation” of employees employed by the city. But staffers said that registers had been tampered with by top management to victimise them.

The city had for the past 18 months, since July 2017, refused to pay staffers for overtime work done on Saturdays when library operating hours were extended.

Sifiso Mbambo, a librarian and Imatu shop steward, said: “They started with a pilot project for one month in June 2017. During the pilot project, they paid us for working on Saturday, the overtime scale. During implementation, they did not pay for Saturday work.”

City of Johannesburg MMC for Community Development Department Nonhlanhla Sifumba, confirmed this, “The pilot was in June 2017, and the implementation started in July 2017.”

From August 2017, library employees stayed away from work, demanding to be paid on an overtime pay scale on Saturdays.

Consequently, the city’s human resources division began to dock the salaries of staffers in September-October 2017 who stayed away from work on Saturdays. Workers claim amounts ranging between R700 and up to R17 000 were deducted from their salaries between September 2017 and December 2018.

The deductions, which were regarded as “unlawful” by unions and employees, prompted the labour unions to apply for a certificate to strike, which the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration granted.

However, a strike and shut-down of public libraries in Johannesburg was averted when a settlement was entered into on November 6, 2018, between Imatu and the city.

Workers have demanded the reimbursement “in full (tax free)” of all salaries docked, that JCL employees who worked extended hours in November 2018 to be paid.

They also demanded that overtime to be remunerated “from 8am-5pm on Saturdays” instead of the current regime of overtime pay from 1pm-5pm.

The original of this report by Sipho Mabaso appeared on page 2 of The Sunday Independent of 7 April 2019

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Thursday, 11 April 2019 11:13

Sowetan reports that all doctors and nurses could soon be subjected to annual TB tests as health minister Aaron Motsoaledi ups the ante on the rampant infection.

Speaking at the University of Cape Town, Motsoaledi said the long-awaited policy to protect health workers against TB could become a reality after the May 8 elections. The policy, which has been in the pipeline for three years, is meant to address the fact that the TB infection rate of 21% among SA health workers is second only to China’s rate of 30%.

TB is the leading cause of death in SA and affects 60% of HIV-positive people.

Addressing UCT academics and students during a memorial lecture in honour of infectious disease specialist Stephen Lawn, who died of cancer in 2016, Motsoaledi said despite SA being one of the most developed countries in Africa with advanced medicine, it was still crippled by TB.

He said the country would start screening every clinic patient in an effort to identify the 160,000 TB patients believed to be undiagnosed, untreated and infectious.

“We have undertaken to find at least half of these, or 80,000, by the end of next year. You can imagine the number that is still out there with TB, which is not followed up. That is why we emphasise that the health system must put more emphasis on primary health than it is doing today,” he said.

The department had already started intensifying its TB contact-tracing programme, and between April and December 2018 it found 38,000 people who had TB but were undiagnosed, by following up on TB patients and screening their relatives.

Motsoaledi said TB contact-tracing must include health workers who were at high risk of infection. “Perhaps the time has arrived that all health workers must be tested for TB … not screened, tested. By testing I mean lining up all the health workers and putting them through Gene-Xpert [a diagnostic machine] or X-rays. We must have health workers tested, maybe once a year, because many of them are vulnerable to TB.

“My heart breaks when I visit clinics, and I see many of them … the number of nurses who I can’t even look in the eye and see their level of bitterness,” said Motsoaledi.

“They don’t have an ordinary TB but have MDR-TB, which they got from patients. The number of doctors who also get MDR-TB is alarming. We think that the time has come, and we believe that very soon we will be introducing that policy and health workers must be tested once a year.”

The SA Medical Association welcomed Motsoaledi’s proposal but suggested it should apply to everyone who worked in clinics and hospitals, including cleaners.

The original of this Sowetan report by Sipokazi Fokazi appeared on page 4 of Sowetan of 5 April 2019

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Monday, 08 April 2019 13:57

Sowetan reports that dozens of truck drivers have had their salaries cut by thousands after their employers allegedly dumped them onto a labour broker.

Their union, the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu), is embroiled in a labour court challenge with freight company Moody Blue Trade Invest, while the industry’s bargaining council has appointed an inspector to gather evidence in a Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration case against Green Door Cargo 2 Congo.

This was after the companies had also “off-loaded” their permanent employees, some of whom had worked for the companies for over 10 years, to RP Africa Fleet Services. Some drivers at Moody Blue told Sowetan that they were forced to resign and join RP Africa Fleet Services to do the same jobs they were doing before, but at a lower pay. Some of Green Door’s employees showed Sowetan their payslips which showed that their basic salaries had dropped from R8,000 in 2014 to R4,800 18 months ago. The National Bargaining Council of Road Freight and Logistics Industry stipulates a minimum salary of R11,000 for truck drivers. A Zimbabwean truck driver who resides in Tembisa, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he joined Green Door more than four years ago taking home a basic salary of R8,000. In addition, he used to receive a R1,500 food allowance and a R1,200 bonus for reaching his truck off-loading point in Koelwezi, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) within 10 days. However, his salary has dropped to R4,800 in three years. He showed Sowetan copies of his payslips dating back to early 2016.

“The quality of my life has constantly gone down over the last five years... Those who asked questions or tried to fight this are now unemployed,” he said while adding that 40 employees who had questioned the salary cuts had been either laid off or told that the routes they were operating were no longer available.

Richard Hall, a manager at Green Door, said they did not employ any cross-border drivers. “We have an agreement with RP Africa to supply us with cross-border drivers.” He said the company would not comment on the issue unless Sowetan revealed the employees it had spoken to. He also declined to respond to questions relating to the salary cuts Green Door’s employees had seen over the years. “Once again, unless we know who these employees are we cannot comment. Suffice to say that as far as we are concerned, this is untrue,” Hall said.

In court papers seen by Sowetan and filed before the labour court in Johannesburg, Moody Blue has applied for a review of a CCMA November arbitration ruling which found that the matter should fall under the ambit of the freight industry bargaining council. Moody Blue, which has already transferred more than 100 truck drivers to RP Africa Fleet Services, has applied for a review of a CCMA ruling. Neil Demaris, a Moody Blue director, argued in court papers that his company was being forced to be registered under the scope of the road freight bargaining council when it was in actual fact operating in retail.

He claimed in court papers that Moody Blue is a wholesaler which transports its own goods from SA to the DRC while employing a majority Congolese workforce. “The majority of staff is Congolese and only 30 are South African-born,” Demaris said in an affidavit that is before the labour court in Braamfontein.

The original of this Sowetan report by Isaac Mahlangu appeared on page 4 of Sowetan of 8 April 2019

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