SAfrican court puts stop on defence department restructuring.
A Pretoria high court judge on Monday [14 July] sent a message to the SA National Defence Force that it had a duty to negotiate with military trade unions about matters that affected the working conditions of soldiers.
Judge Eberhardt Bertelsmann granted an urgent interdict to the SA National Defence Union (SANDU) to stop the Department of Defence from continuing with restructuring the SANDF pending the outcome of arbitration.
This means that the SANDF will not be able to go ahead with the redeployment of almost 8,000 soldiers, who were mostly earmarked to go to other government departments...
The judge said it was clear that the SANDF had unilaterally adopted a transformation structure similar to that of the civil service, but without any prior consultation with a military trade union.
SANDU'S request to negotiate with the Department of Defence was ignored, whereafter the union declared a dispute. The outcome of their dispute was pending before the Military Arbitration Board and was expected to be concluded shortly...
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15 Juillet 2003 à 10:52 dans
- zsandf (anglais)
