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Cape Town - All police officials will be told to strike if the department does not implement a salary grading agreement, a Western Cape Cosatu official said on Wednesday.
Congress of SA Trade Unions provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich told about 300 police administrative staff in Cape Town that national police commissioner Riah Phiyega was not abiding by the law.
"Phiyega has a responsibility to make sure that these agreements are implemented... in this country, we have rules and we have laws. The workers must always follow the laws," he said.
"If you don't want to follow the laws... then we'll tell all of the police, whether they're essential services or not, to come out on strike with all of us, until we win those demands."
The staff, aligned to the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru), cheered at Ehrenreich's comments outside the provincial police building in Green Point.
Earlier, they marched through central Cape Town with vuvuzelas and placards in hand, singing loudly and attracting the attention of numerous office workers in the tall buildings around them.
The workers were demanding that a safety and security sectoral bargaining council agreement signed in 2011 be implemented within two weeks. The agreement contains provisions related to pay level upgrades and career path planning.
Ehrenreich said he represented more than 240 000 Cosatu members in the province and wanted the police staff to know they were behind their struggle.
"It's because of that solidarity that we are telling the SA Police Service that we will not tolerate their discrimination, and we will be back here with you unless they pay you the decent wages you deserve."
He said they refused to believe the SAPS did not have enough money to implement wage increases, as it claimed.
At least 12 police officials stood in front of the building while the crowd was being addressed.
The union members called for the staff looking out of the windows to leave their offices and join them below.
