By Roland Routh
WINDHOEK – The Windhoek High Court on Tuesday interdicted aggrieved Roads Contractor Company (RCC) workers country-wide from going on an indefinite strike.
Judge Harald Geier granted RCC the interdict after the state-owned company launched an urgent application on Tuesday.
The urgent application was launched after the company received a notice of industrial action from the Public Service Union of Namibia (PSUN), which is the recognised exclusive bargaining agent for the workers of RCC.
According to the notice the workers were supposed to down tools at 12h00 on Tuesday due to a dispute being declared in negotiations on wages and working conditions.
The RCC denied that a dispute arose or that negotiations were deadlocked and said they complied with the settlement agreement entered between the parties on January 7 this year.
The PSUN however said the agreement did not touch on issues such as housing allowance, field allowance, subsistence and travelling allowance, pension scheme and salary structure pending the outcome of draft policies.
They said there was an undertaking by both parties to resume negotiations on those outstanding issues in January 2014, but that the RCC did not comply.
It is against this failure that PSUN declared a dispute, it was stated in records before court.
However, in an affidavit filed with the court by Pieter Oosthuizen, the acting CEO of RCC, he denied that the company failed to resume negotiations without good cause.
He also said the averment of the union that it had declared a dispute with the labour commissioner could not be true as there was no dispute to declare since the dispute was amicably resolved on January 7, 2014.
He also said the dispute declared by the union on June 18, 2013 for lack of interest and refusal to bargain was also amicably settled between the parties.
He further said that a dispute referred to the Labour Commissioner on June 17, 2014 was in essence the same dispute that was referred in 2013 and was resolved by the agreement of January 07, 2014.
He said that in spite of a conciliation held by the parties concerning the 2014 dispute, the union, despite the fact that the dispute was amicably resolved by the parties on January 07, 2014, went ahead and obtained a certificate of unresolved dispute. According to Oosthuizen, who was recently in the news for staying in a RCC house for free and driving a RCC vehicle while earning millions, the parties agreed that negotiations for salary increases shall be conducted in accordance with the terms of clause 8.1 of the recognition agreement.
Clause 8.1 states that the union “shall submit the employees’ proposal for substantive wage increase/changes in writing to the company by no later than 30th September of every year, setting out the particulars and motivation for its proposed changes/increase for employees in the bargaining unit”.
He said the union had all along known the position of the company with regard to salary negotiations for the 2014/2015 year, but notwithstanding this wrongly persisted that the 2013 dispute remained unresolved.
Judge Geier granted the RCC the interim interdict and ordered that a rule nisi be issued calling upon the union to show cause before or on March 3, 2015 why an order interdicting and restraining the union and its members from striking on December 9, 2014 or any other date pursuant to the union’s notice of industrial action of December 05 or at any other date and time pending the finalisation of this application, should not be made final.
He also ordered that the cost of the application shall stand over and that the union must file its answering papers on or before January 30 and the RCC its replying papers before or on February 13 next year.
The matter has been postponed to March 3 for case management and the order will be in effect till then.
Advocate Dennis Khama appeared on behalf of the RCC and Ramon Maasdorp represented the union.