BURS union members call off indefinite strike

Botswana Unified Revenue Service (BURS) employees who participated in the industrial action over salary increment have instructed their union Botswana Public Employees Union (BOPEU) to call off the indefinite strike. BURS employees participated in the strike since July this year. BOPEU General Secretary Topias Marenga confirmed this in an interview with Botswana Guardian on Wednesday this week.

The employees engaged in a strike after a fallout with the employer over salary increment with the workers demanding 11 percent while BURS settled for 6 percent. The employees later agreed to 6 percent only if there are other incentives such as Up-keep allowance.
This week Marenga stated that following an extensive consultation with the union members who participated in the strike BOPEU was instructed to halt the strike. He however said that they are appealing an Industrial Court ruling in a case in which the union was challenging a decision by BURS to lock out striking employees. The industrial court dismissed BOPEU’s application challenging the legality of the BURS lock out notice on workers who were taking part in the strike.

BOPEU had also applied to the Industrial court seeking an order to declare the decision by BURS to force the workers on strike to sign letters of committal as unlawful, irregular and or unfair. When dismissing BOPEU’s application, Justice Tapiwa Marumo noted that an employer is entitled to decide whether or not to allow employees returning from strike back to work, once it has established their reason for returning to work. Marenga said they want the High Court to review and set aside the decision of the Industrial Court.

“With regards to the strike our members indicated that they believe they have made that point. Their opinion is that now the employer has realised that when they have demands they have to be listened to. They gave us an instruction to meet with the BURS management negotiating team and accept the 6 percent that the employer had earlier offered. Our negotiating team did just that and BURS has promised to pay all the outstanding money for our members who were participating in the industrial action. The payment will be backdated from April 2015. A promise was made also by the employer that all the outstanding payment will be done before the end of next month”, explained Marenga, adding that they met the employer on the 26th of October 2015 to convey the message about halting the strike and proposing to accept 6 percent. He said the final decision with the employer was reached on the 6th of this month.

According to Marenga, this move was not necessarily to say they are giving up. He said they were instead looking at the bigger picture. “As we have been saying we were not fighting BURS and we were always willing to listen to them and reach an amicable solution. Our members at BURS felt this is good for the future just in case they want to engage in another strike. We were also looking at the fact that time is not on our side as we have to prepare our basket of demands for the next financial year. We want to present it early next year so that when BURS prepares its budget we would have put our demands on the table. So if we negotiate with them while on the other hand we have an indefinite strike it may jeopardise the  probability of successful negotiations.

The other issue is that there is salary restructuring happening at BURS so we have to wait and see what is the outcome because it might be in our favour going forward when we bargain”, he stated. Marenga could not disclose the amount that BURS will part with as back pays because of the varying payment scales for the employees, but said it could reach millions. Efforts to speak to BURS Communications Manager Refilwe Moonwa were futile at press time as she was said to be in a meeting.