GEORGE NEWS - High salaries of municipal workers and officials, and municipalities' inability to cope with proposed yearly salary increases by unions that hit far above inflation, did the rounds in national media.
The online article Munisipale lone ruk handuit: R20 000 per maand om slote te grou by Antoinette Slabbert, recently published on Netwerk24, explores the scenario.
In an interview with a municipal manager (kept anonymous) it came to light that unschooled municipal workers, working for a medium-sized municipality in the Western Cape, receive salaries of about R250 000 per year. This is over R20 000 per month for digging ditches with a shovel.
In the private sector, the remuneration for this type of work is about R80 000 per year, or about R6 000 per month.
The salary negotiations for local, district and metro municipalities are negotiated at the National Bargaining Council in the presence of unions (Imatu and Samwu) and employer representatives.
The Minister of the Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs promulgates the salaries of senior managers and municipal managers.
With this information in mind, our local B-municipality and district municipality were approached for comment on the percentage of their income spent on salaries, on consultants, a rough outline of the different salary scales for certain jobs and current wage negotiations with unions.
Less than a third
Acting Municipal Manager for George Municipality Dawie Adonis said they spend 28.25% of their funding on salaries.
"This percentage excludes funding for the George Integrated Public Transport Network (Go George), as it skews the calculation," he said.
"George Municipality budgets annually for salary increases, however, the national bargaining negotiations are not yet finalised for the next three years."
In all wage negotiations the norm is that unions will get their mandates from their members. However, the final agreement is always much lower than the unions' demands.
"For the 2022/23 year the use of consultants amounted to R23 477 826 out of the overall operational budget of R2 646 357 616 which equates to 0.89%."
Two thirds
Garden Route District Municipality (GRDM) commented through its communications manager Herman Pieters, saying their employee-related cost (2022/23) comprises 66,8% of the total revenue.
"As the district municipality does not deliver trading services, we are mostly reliant on governmental grants at this stage. However, because of the implementation of the management of the regional landfill site, this percentage will decline significantly."
Pieters said municipalities can experience financial strain due to wage demands that exceed inflation rates, but confirmed that the GRDM is not among the 223 (86%) of municipalities, as mentioned in the article by Netwerk24, that would take serious strain should they be forced to give a salary increase as insisted upon by the unions for municipal workers.
A percentage of 0.63% of GRDM's funds is used on consultants.
Word from the side
Murray Burger, a remuneration specialist and a founder of the South African Reward Association (Sara), said as far as he is aware, Tshwane City Council is the only city council that shows "the will" to properly manage the ongoing upward trend and unaffordable pressure on salaries.
According to Burger, the management of compensation is complicated because salary scales are negotiated centrally, and unions have too much power.
Dr Dennis Farrell
Dr Dennis Farrell of Business Café touched on the subject of sick leave and overall productivity, comparing a sick leave cycle of 80 days over three years for municipal workers, with the Basic Employment Opinion Act which provides for 30 days of sick leave per three-year cycle.
According to Payscale (July 2024), a website that compares salaries, the average salary in George is R182 000 per year, thus R15 167 per month. Farrell said this average is below the lowest salary scale of municipal workers (as published on Netwerk24).
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