Thousands of SA Revenue Service (Sars) employees are set to benefit from a high court ruling ordering the taxman to honour its wage agreement with unions and increase salaries.
Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, Judge Elizabeth Kubushi this week declared the agreement is valid and binding and that Sars’ failure to implement the salary adjustments is in breach of its employees’ contracts of employment.
Judge Kubushi also ordered Sars and its commissioner Edward Kieswetter to pay the increases for the 2021/22 financial year.
The dispute over failure to pay salary increases started in March 2021 after Kieswetter informed the Public Servants Association (PSA) and the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) that it did not have enough money to pay the increase for the last year of the agreement (2021/22), which was due in April 2021.
Sars had engaged the National Treasury on multiple occasions for additional funding but was unsuccessful and told that the public purse was overly stretched and unable to pay salary increases.
At the strategic planning meeting, Kieswetter told the PSA and Nehawu that Sars had some money available to fund leave encashment, bursaries and bonus payments as well as salary increases to be funded by about R290 million.
In April 2021, in internal communication, Sars informed that the “unfortunate reality is that Sars is unable to pay salary increases for 2021/22 due to not receiving the required budget allocation from National Treasury”.
The PSA then hauled Sars before the high court seeking to enforce the agreement and argued the decision not to increase salaries violated its members’ rights to engage in collective bargaining.
This week, Judge Kubushi found that there was no evidence on record indicating how Sars expended its allocation to prove that there was no money available for increases or whether the expenditure allocated was more critical than the increases.
She found the wage agreement lawful and valid.
Sars told the court that the wage agreement in dispute was non-compliant with the Public Finance Management Act as it linked salary increases to the consumer price index (CPI) in future years.
The taxman yesterday did not respond to questions from Independent Media.
According to the PSA, which represents 5 200 of Sars’ nearly 12 500 employees, the union expects the implementation of the outstanding 2.3% salary increase backdated to April 1, 2021.
”The PSA views this ruling as a resounding victory for the union’s members and a reinforcement of the principle that contractual commitments must be honoured consistently,” the union stated.
It called on Kieswetter to implement the 2.3% salary shortfall without any further delays and not to waste taxpayers’ money any further by appealing Judge Kubushi’s ruling.
The PSA added that the ruling underscored the court's commitment to upholding the terms of employment agreements and ensuring fair treatment of public sector employees.
The Federation of Unions of SA (Fedusa) echoed similar sentiments, calling on Sars to accept the judgment and promptly implement the upon salary increases.
”Attempts to challenge the ruling would only see much-needed taxpayers’ funds going to waste and will worsen labour relations in the workplace,” warned Fedusa.
The Star
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