SAMWU NON-ATTENDANCE OF JMPD STRATEGIC WORKSHOP
28 April 2018
SAMWU NON-ATTENDANCE OF JMPD STRATEGIC WORKSHOP
We have engaged our constituencies with regards to the invitation by JMPD management to their strategic breakaway workshop and conditions attached thereto. We wish to inform JMPD management that we have taken a collective decision not to participate in the aforesaid workshop for the following reasons:
• JMPD Management were not amenable to a shop-steward delegation that would reflect the entirety of our constituencies in terms of directorates
• They were only prepared to accommodate one representative and another only after we raised our legitimate concerns about the issue
• They cited budgetary constraints with regards to the issue and we are of a considered view that this reason is devoid of merit and it is a conceptualised excuse to weaken the unions representativeness in the workshop
• We are further of the educated opinion that had the employer intended to have a representative delegation of the union they would have taken cognisance of the matter in their planning, notwithstanding the fact that we were never invited to their strategic workshop with the former Chief of Police.
• The results of their last strategic workshop are a matter of public record, job reservations, irregular appointments and operationally incoherent restructuring of LIPCO.
• We even offered to pay for the travel and food expenses of our representative delegation, however the employer had no appetite for this revolutionary gesture as they were not interested in our legitimate demand for adequate representation
• Our collective membership is of a justified view that JMPD operations are labour intensive and for the workshop to be strategic in the truest sense, labour representatives as reflected in the composition of JMPD operations should as a matter of imperative partake meaningfully in such a workshop
• All the above facts only serve to solidify the fact that management has a particular posture when it comes to labour relations and it is most certainly not in the interest of the workers
• Notwithstanding the fact that the programme itself is certainly not reflective of material and urgent issues the workers are bedevilled with on a daily basis.
• We even sent them a list of items that needed urgent to be included in the breakaway programme, however this was also unsurprisingly not entertained
• The posture of the employer in this instance is not entirely surprising as it is consistent with their stance of excluding the union in memorial service programmes as much as we are part of grief that befalls the families of our members. The inference is on the wall and easy to comprehend.
• The same management that claims to have the best interest of workers at heart, also excludes us from observer status in job interviews, again the rational is clear for the blind to see.
• In light of these realities we urge our members to dilute their expectations of better working conditions under the new leadership. We urge them to unite and support our struggle for better working conditions for all workers.
• We further wish to remind JMPD management that as much as we possess no illusions of co-management, good governance as legislated in participative governance construct, enjoins us as stakeholders to hold them accountable in every respect of their management activities
• We most certainly believe that in this instance and in the absence of the core of JMPD operation which is labour, the whole workshop will degenerate into a management holiday at the expense of taxpayers
We are a mandate driven revolutionary union and we will never accept conditions of invitation to the aforementioned workshop under the anti-labour conditions as espoused by JMPD in this instance. We will continue to fight for the best interests of our members at any opportunity that avails itself, however we shall not capitulate to conditions that reduce our revolutionary organisation to a paupers’ status with meaningless socialisation with management. Our members come first and we shall always promote and advance their interests.
SAMWU PROVINCIAL OFFICE