BOPEU wins Round One
Mpho Mokwape | Tuesday February 23, 2016 18:00
In his ruling, Judge President Tebogo Maruping gave BOFEPUSU up to March 7 to show cause why final orders should not be issued excluding from the PBSC and declaring that only trade unions which are recognised by government are entitled to be in the Council.
Maruping also ordered the respondents to show cause why a final order should not be granted to stop the proceedings of the Council in the 2016/17 wage negotiations, pending the conclusion of the case.
Yesterday’s ruling came after BOPEU filed an urgent application seeking the court to declare that BOFEPUSU was not entitled to sit in the bargaining council. BOPEU argued that only trade unions recognised by the government were entitled to be admitted.
Delivering the ruling, Maruping said BOFEPUSU had failed to give satisfactory answers to the applicant’s complaint and only submitted that BOPEU never complained before withdrawing from the “acting jointly” arrangement entered into in November 2011.
“The applicant’s contention is that BOFEPUSU is not recognised by the employer at the workplace level. If indeed BOFEPUSU is just a label for acting jointly arrangement then it probably would not be recognised at the workplace level and is therefore disqualified,” he said.
Maruping maintained that the court agreed with BOPEU on the fact that BOFEPUSU should be made up of several autonomous trade unions, in the same way that BFTU was set up.
He argued that according to the Public Service Act it clearly stated that ‘every trade union that is a party to the council shall be a recognised trade union in the public sector’. Therefore, Maruping said, BOFEPUSU as a federation of trade unions was made up of several autonomous trade unions.
“The court agrees that BOFEPUSU would be incapable of meeting the requirement that it must have as its members employees of the government and would be incapable of meeting the requirement to represent at least one third of the unionised public servants whose trade unions are recognised by the government,” he said.
Furthermore Maruping explained that while it was not in dispute that the PSBC constitution permitted the establishment of an ‘acting jointly arrangement’ at the same it stated that there must be two or more admitted trade unions.
He said this meant that there must be at least two trade unions within an ‘acting jointly’ arrangement, which have been admitted into the PSBC.