The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) has noted with grave concern the Labour Court judgment delivered by Judge Snyman on 9 May 2025, which reviewed and set aside two exemption rulings by the South African Local Government Bargaining Council (SALGBC). This judgment represents a deeply troubling intervention by the courts in the collective bargaining process, with far-reaching consequences for workers’ rights. 

The ruling remits the City of Tshwane’s 2021/2 exemption application, seeking relief from a negotiated 3.5% wage increase back to the SALGBC for fresh determination. Simultaneously, and more alarmingly, it grants the City exemption from implementing the 5.4% wage increase for the 2023/4 financial year, effectively stripping thousands of municipal workers of their hard-won rights and undermining the principle of fair compensation for their labour.

This ruling is not a neutral legal exercise but a judicial endorsement of austerity, continuing a dangerous trend of courts encroaching into collective bargaining to undermine worker protections and erode the power of unions to effectively represent their members.

The Labour Court’s decision to override the SALGBC’s authority, a body constitutionally mandated to resolve labour disputes within the local government sector and give effect to agreements reached through collective bargaining, represents a direct attack on the autonomy of collective bargaining. By substituting the SALGBC’s 2023 ruling with its own determination, the court has overstepped its role, improperly venturing into the evaluation of complex financial evidence and affordability criteria, a terrain rightfully reserved for bargaining councils with their specific expertise in labour relations within the sector.

This deeply concerning judicial intervention echoes the Constitutional Court’s 2022 betrayal of public servants in NEHAWU v Minister of Public Service and Administration, where workers were disgracefully forced to sacrifice legally negotiated wage increases under the spurious guise of fiscal constraints, setting a dangerous precedent for the erosion of workers’ rights. These rulings collectively signal a judicial green light for employers, particularly within the public sector, to disregard binding collective agreements with increasing impunity, cynically weaponising unverified and often deliberately misleading claims of “financial distress” to legitimise the exploitation of their workforce and the erosion of hard-won employment conditions.

The City of Tshwane’s alleged financial crisis, repeatedly cited to justify the denial of workers’ rightful earnings, is in reality a carefully constructed fiction, a smokescreen obscuring years of gross mismanagement and politically motivated sabotage. While the court obsesses over short-term cash flow deficits and manipulated revenue shortfalls (paras 53–63), it wilfully ignores the City’s systemic and deeply ingrained failures: the collapsing rate of revenue collection, the staggering R20 billion in uncollected debts owed to the municipality, and the reckless and profligate spending on politically connected consultants and unsustainable vanity projects that drain public resources. 

The vilification of workers in Tshwane is not something new, in fact it was started by the then DA-led administration in 2016. This was, and continues to be a brazen and ideologically driven attack on municipal workers. This attack served as a precursor to this manufactured crisis, demonstrating a profound contempt for the very people who deliver essential services to the city’s residents.

Yet, instead of impartially holding the City’s leadership accountable for this financial malfeasance, the court has perversely rewarded its incompetence and disregard for due process, effectively forcing workers to unfairly subsidise the consequences of elite mismanagement and corruption. This is not justice, but a form of economic violence, a judicial entrenchment of inequality that denies workers their fundamental dignity during a crippling cost-of-living crisis while simultaneously shielding the powerful and politically connected from facing the consequences of their actions.

The timing of this deeply regressive ruling is no accident, nor is its significance lost on SAMWU. As South Africa prepares to mark the 30th anniversary of the Labour Relations Act (LRA), a landmark legislation forged in the fires of the anti-apartheid struggle to democratise workplaces and empower workers through collective bargaining, this judgment chillingly exposes a coordinated and insidious effort to dismantle its core principles and turn back the clock on decades of hard-won progress. 

The LRA’s fundamental promise of worker empowerment, ensuring that workers’ voices would shape their working conditions through genuine negotiation rather than employer coercion, is being systematically suffocated by judicial overreach and a resurgence of employer-friendly interpretations, tragically reducing workers’ rights to mere bargaining chips to be callously traded away in the pursuit of short-sighted austerity agendas. This is not progress, but a deeply concerning regression to the bad old days of unchecked exploitation that the LRA so bravely sought to eradicate.

SAMWU will not relent in the face of this judicial assault. We are immediately preparing urgent and robust legal appeals to the Labour Appeal Court and, if necessary, the Constitutional Court, challenging both the procedural illegitimacy and the deeply ingrained substantive bias that characterise this deeply flawed ruling. We will demand full and transparent accounting of the City’s finances, exposing the rot of mismanagement and the self-serving political corruption that underpins its cynical and self-serving claims of financial hardship, including a rigorous investigation into the City’s dubious R1.1 billion salary budget surplus and the unchecked and often unjustifiable expenditure on external consultants.

Concurrently with these legal challenges, we are actively mobilising our members and forging alliances with progressive forces across the broader labour movement for a campaign of sustained and escalating mass action designed to defend the fundamental principles of collective bargaining and resist this judicial overreach with the full force of our collective power. The courts were the last institution we expected to be complicit in the erosion of workers’ rights and the perpetuation of inequality and poverty. 

This deeply unjust ruling is not just an attack on municipal workers; it is a clarion call, a direct attack on the rights of all municipal employees, public servants, and private-sector workers alike. It sends a chilling signal to every employer in South Africa that collective agreements, once considered sacrosanct, are now negotiable at will, and that the hard-won rights of workers are distressingly disposable in the face of perceived financial pressures. 

SAMWU categorically rejects this regression. To our members, we extend our deepest gratitude for your trust in the union’s commitment to defend your rights. This trust is the bedrock of our collective strength. However, we must also sound a clarion call: while SAMWU will lead this legal and strategic battle, workers must stand ready to mobilise, organise, and resist any assault on their hard won rights. History has shown that justice is not granted but seized through unity, solidarity, and unyielding resolve.

Issued by SAMWU Secretariat

Dumisane Magagula, General Secretary (076 580 4029), Nkhetheni Muthavhi, Deputy General Secretary (082 526 5224) or Papikie Mohale, National Media Officer (076 795 8670)