It's back to work for striking Parliament employees

Cape Town - Parliament has in principle agreed to pay striking National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) bonuses based on their annual package.

However, it would be up to a task team consisting of Nehawu and Parliament management to calculate just how much this would cost the institution.

Parliament Nehawu-affiliated workers downed tools on November 6 calling for a review of the bonus payment structure.

On Tuesday, they got what they wanted when the institution opened up discussions on the matter.

The protesters would return to work on Wednesday.

Parliament secretary Gengezi Mgidlana said the union and the institution had found a win-win solution.

“In principle, both parties agree to work towards an understanding the performance bonus is on an annual basis,” he said quoting the agreement.

He said there would be a task team set up to look at how much this would cost.

“We would look at the modalities, taking into consideration the finances of Parliament, which means we should try in whatever we do to make sure we don’t move outside of the parameters that are there. The answers there need to be found by this team, which we hope would give us more enlightenment.”

He said they would not be forfeiting any Parliament programmes to find the money, but the task team would have to find the solutions.

The striking workers would also get back their docked pay, but this was not to reimburse them, Mgidlana said.

He said the union had agreed their workers would work tirelessly once back at their posts to deal with any backlogs, including payment of service providers.

For this, they would not be paid any overtime, but would be paid the money deducted from their salaries.

Nehawu branch chairperson Sthembiso Tembe said a meeting on Friday would present the task team's work and the outcome would determine the permanent end to the strike.

Nehawu branch secretary Thabang Molusi said they had been proven right about the bonus and he felt it was important to stress ''the job is not done yet''.

"I don't think we should celebrate yet, but at least we should celebrate the work done today."

This article first appeared on News24 – see here.