Some staff members of the Free State ANC caucus in the legislature have taken the party to the CCMA for failure to pay salaries. They have also approached the labour department to get the party to commit to making payments of the outstanding Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) benefits.
Employees are accusing the ANC caucus of deducting more than they were supposed to for a period of five years on their Pay As You Earn contributions.
Employees of the Free State ANC caucus allege that the last time they received a full salary was in July this year. Prior to that, they had only received half of their salaries.
They say they were also shocked to discover that their UIF contributions were not paid over to the fund. Their Pay As You Earn deductions also did not find their way to the South African Revenue Services. They now want all monies owed to them paid.
“The main issue causing the contention between the employer and the employee is that our salaries have not been paid. The last payment of our salaries was on the 15th of July 2024. From what I’ve heard from other employees is that the employer has this assumption that our contracts ended on the 28th of May with the dissolution of the sixth administration,” says Tumelo Matia, FS ANC Caucus Employee.
Employees were paid in June and in July.
Matia says the fact that the employer continued to engage them beyond the elections essentially automated the renewal of their contracts.
“There is a difficulty that the Department of Labour bumped into because on the 21st of October, as we were trying to resolve this non-payment of our salaries, we approached the Department of Labour and CCMA. The Department of Labour then went to the employer, and they requested certain information from the employer, one of those elements of information was that the employer must supply the Department of Labour with proof of registration as a UIF contributor and the employer failed to do that,”
The ANC chief whip in the Free State says the contracts of employees were not renewed. And that the bloated staff complement caused the office to run into a financial mess. The ANC caucus is now running on a skeleton staff of only three people until further notice.
“For the new term, we realised there were a lot of financial problems that the institution was having so as a result we could not be able to absorb people with a new contract so as a result they believe they were supposed to extend their contracts now because contract have not been renewed, they feel they have been dismissed from work,” says Oupa Khoabane, ANC Free State Chief Whip.
Khoabane says debt to creditors runs into millions.
“When the legislation to fund parties changed, it affected us negatively as the ANC in the province. As a result, we then had to have our finances overstretched to an extent that in the process, we had creditors that we were not able to pay. This is exactly what we are dealing with at the moment to deal with those financial problems,”
While employees say they are struggling to put food on the table for their families, Khoabane says he is hopeful that they will be able to renew their contracts in the new year after fixing the finances of his office.
Video: Free State ANC taken to CCMA by employees
