Irritated security guards who work at various City of Tshwane buildings stormed the offices of the City’s security director known as Malatjie on Thursday afternoon.
This in demand for salaries which have not been paid to them for three months now.
Though the security officers guard the City of Tshwane premises around the city, they have actually been employed via labour brokers who often delay paying them their monthly salaries on time.
The modus operandi used by the City of Tshwane to pay them is that every pay-day at the end of each month the City of Tshwane deposits their salaries into the bank accounts of labour brokers, then the labour brokers, who do not do any actual work, take large chunks of the money for themselves and pay the security guards the little that has remained after they (labour brokers) have taken their share.
Sometimes payment is made late into the month while at other times payment is not made at all for a period of three to four months.
The aggrieved workers have been calling for the City of Tshwane to scrap the labour-brokering system for many years now, this as they regard it as “modern day” slavery.
Secretary General of SACSAAWU, Andries Diphapang Potsane told Tshwane Talks that they came to do a sit-in inside the offices of security director of the City of Tshwane Malatjie to demand salaries of their union members.
“We started camping in the office at around 2.pm and at around 3.30 pm the labour brokers started paying our members their due salaries one after another, obviously as a result of our drastic sit-in action,” said Potsane.
“The only way to address the issue of late or non-payment by labour broker companies is to take the kind of action that we have taken today, otherwise our members would still be unpaid even now,” enthused Potsane.
“If we had not engaged City of Tshwane security chiefs or directors directly by camping in this office, no action would have been taken to pay our members their long overdue salaries,” he said.
“We are happy that our members have been paid now and they will also celebrate Women’s Day tomorrow,” he said.
He revealed that initially the unpaid security officers had camped inside the SACSAAWU headquarters, but the union advised them that the best way for them to get paid would be to go and camp right inside the office of Malatjie at Tshwane House as he is the director of security in the City of Tshwane.
“We are sick and tired actually about labour brokers who fail to pay security guards on time, and that is why we came here to Tshwane House to engage the City of Tshwane as the client of the labour brokers to force its service providers to comply with rules of employment that include paying salaries on time” said Potsane.
He said workers are currently struggling with issues like UIF and Provident Fund because while they actually contribute to the said funds and their monies are being deducted every month for these funds, when they go and check they find that their names don’t appear in those funds as the labour brokers have not registered them officially as permanent workers,” he said.
He appealed to the City of Tshwane Metro to take action against non-compliant labour broker companies and if the Metro can’t insource security guards, then it must make sure that the labour brokers comply.