Cape Town - The United National Transport Union (Untu) has threatened to take legal action against Prasa, saying the passenger rail agency was not honouring a labour court order.
This after the court ordered the agency to adhere to a three-year 5% increase it agreed to in 2021 which the cash-strapped agency has failed to pay workers.
Untu said Prasa should be held in contempt of court.
Speaking to eNCA, the union's general secretary, Cobus Van Vuuren, said that in 2020 they signed a three-year wage agreement with Prasa but during the first year of the agreement, the agency failed to implement a wage increase in April of 2020.
“We then threatened them with labour court action upon which Prasa eventually paid the wage increase around October 2020.
“When the second year of the agreement came around in 2021, Prasa again failed to implement wage increase. We then pursued the action via the CCMA. However that was unsuccessful and we then pursued labour court action; we then got labour court action to sit down in July of 2022 and we got the labour judgment in January this year,“ he said.
Van Vuuren said that Prasa had up until Tuesday afternoon to do the calculations that were owed to the employees and processing of payments.
“They have failed to do so and we will be pursuing further action. Prasa in the meantime has said they want to engage with us and saying they would like to have a meeting to discuss the payment plan. However, they have cancelled those meetings on numerous occasions,” Van Vuuren said.
Van Vuuren further said that the Labour Court gave Prasa until the close of business on Friday to submit a payment schedule to the transport union.
He blamed the agency for delaying the process of payment and said union members had run out of patience.
"We will be proceeding with legal action and we are still open to a meeting with Prasa to discuss how they are going to pay the employees money that is owed to them. In the meantime we are continuing with legal action that is available to us.
IOL