The Labour Appeal Court (LAC) judgment has interdicted essential service workers from continuing with the destructive industrial action that has resulted in the death of at least four patients.
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) says its attorneys are studying the judgment.
Yesterday Basheer Waglay, judge president of the LAC, and his colleagues Kate Savage and Nyameko Gqamana, ordered the industrial action by Nehawu, its members and employees ‘who are employed in essential service’, interdicted with immediate effect.
‘Nehawu and all such essential service employees are restrained and prevented from continuing with or participating in any such strike, picket or any other form of industrial action.’
Nehawu was also ordered to inform its members and officials and all those to whom it had given notice of the strike in every province ‘including but not limited to every hospital and clinic in SA at which it has members within the essential services, of the order of this court, through publication on social media, by email and by all other appropriate means available to it’, by no later than 1pm on Monday 13 March.
Nehawu national spokesperson Lwazi Nkolonzi told Business Day: ‘We are waiting for our legal department to give us legal advice on the judgment, after which we will make a pronouncement on the way forward’.
In his medium-term budget policy statement in October, finance minister Enoch Godongwana — a former trade unionist — hailed the 3% offer the government unilaterally implemented, saying it was in the best interest of the fiscus and public service workers, and that implementing it will not undermine the collective bargaining process.
The industrial action is viewed as the biggest test to his determination to rein in the public sector wage bill, which eats up more than one-third of government spending.
[Photo: Rosetta Msimango for City Press]