The salaries of the country’s 295,000 municipal workers will go up by 4.75%, as will their homeowners’ allowance and their employer’s medical aid contributions. The local government’s monthly minimum wage will also go up to R11,100.
Starting in July, the minimum wage in all 257 municipalities will go up from R10,600 to R11,100. The homeowners’ allowance will go up from R1,170 to R1,225, and the employer’s medical aid contributions will go up from R5,971 to just under R6,100.
The raises are part of the wage agreement that was signed in September 2024 after long talks at the SA Local Government Bargaining Council (SALGBC).
Bill Govender, the General Secretary of the SALGBC, told municipal managers on Friday that the bargaining council wants all municipalities to follow through on the raises.
The September 2024 agreement says that any municipality can ask for an exemption from having to follow any part of the deal within 30 days of the budget being approved for the 2026/27 financial year or June 30, whichever comes first.
The 2026/27 leg of the agreement comes after unions representing City of Tshwane workers signed a deal. The 3.5% raise that wasn’t given in July 2021 after the municipality got an exemption was then looked at again and sent back to the SALGBC.
The unions won at the bargaining council, and the exemption was thrown out. The municipality was told to raise workers’ wages and pay them back within six months.
But the City of Tshwane appealed to unions because the R1.1 billion that needed to be paid within six months would put a lot of financial strain on the municipality, which is currently on a path to recovery.
The Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) in Tshwane says that organized labor and the city worked together to find a way to make the 3.5% pay and benefit increase happen at the beginning of this month.
The settlement agreement says that the back pay for 3.5% salary increases that go back to July 2021 will be paid from June 2021 until February 2029.
Imatu says that payments will start with the lowest-paid employees and end with the highest-paid employees.
City of Tshwane workers are still fighting over the 5.4% pay raise for the 2023/24 fiscal year.
Imatu said that the case is now with Labour and Labour Appeal Court Judge President Mogomotsi Edwin Molahlehi, who is looking into the Labour Court’s decision to let the city off the hook.
The SA Local Government Association and the SA Municipal Workers’ Union are also starting talks to reach a new wage curve collective agreement as part of the SALGBC.
If negotiations are successful, all municipalities may have the same pay scales.
The SALGBC has asked the Rosebank, Johannesburg-based management consulting firm 21st Century to help them come up with new pay scales by looking at the old ones and current payroll data for each employee in all municipalities.
The bargaining council said, “Not sending in the required information makes the sector analysis less accurate and slows down the wage curve negotiations.”
