JRA claims contingency plans in place during Samwu strike

The strike action began on 27 February and the agency’s operations manager for marketing and communications, Bertha Peters-Scheepers said following the second day of the strike by JRA employees affiliated to Samwu, the union has communicated its intention to hand over a memorandum to management on 6 March.

Scheepers said, “Samwu JRA employees embarked on a strike on 27 February due to a dispute on three main matters out of an original 15 that management and Samwu have not been able to reach consensus on.” MeanwhileJRA managing director, Skhumbuzo Macozoma said the agency would like to resume negotiations as soon as possible as the entity remained firmly committed to reaching consensus with Samwu which will resolve the current impasse.

The strikers want the introduction of a pay progression system in the agency, starting with a once-off structural adjustment of salaries of all employees in levels six to nine; an increase in the locomotion allowance for inspectors from R4 500 to R8 500; and the removal of one depot manager in Region F where there are currently two depot managers assigned to the full region and Inner City respectively.

However the agency’s board and management are of the view that these three issues do not necessarily justify strike action as management has “provided clear and viable processes that are currently underway to address concerns in these areas”.

Macozoma said, “Consequently, a multi-disciplinary team consisting of representatives from JRA management, the board and the City of Johannesburg, is being [established] to resume negotiations with Samwu. We also seek to minimise the impact of the strike on day-to-day road maintenance operations.”

He added that to achieve that, contingency measures were being implemented in regions to deal with daily operations as per each depot’s monthly maintenance plan, as well as to attend to emergency standby matters daily. “As per the JRA’s strike management plan, the entity will continue monitoring the situation and provide updates to all stakeholders as required,” Macozoma said.