SA council workers declare wage dispute, strike looms

Cape Town - South Africa's municipal workers union has declared a dispute with South African Local Government Association (Salga) after wage negotiations deadlocked, the union said on Monday.

The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu), which represents around 160 000 workers at cities nationally, threatened a strike should mediation on their 11% wage demand fail, it said in a statement, adding that Salga is only offering a 5.9% increase.

In May Samwu abandoned talks with General-Secretary, Walter Theledi, saying the association’s revised offer was a slap in the face of workers who have scaled down their ask from 15%.

At the time he said the union was not interested in a fourth round of talks, should Salga fail to improve its offer.

The negotiations also faced obstacles due to a new performance-based system which Salga hoped to introduce along with its wage offer.

READ: Samwu rejects 'new' performance-based system