The SA National Civic Organisation (Sanco) plans to shut down Johannesburg on March 25.
Sanco is calling on workers affiliated to the SA Municipal Workers' Union (Samwu) and Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) to down tools and march to the city centre on the day.
This comes after 130 political support staff were issued with notices regarding their employment statuses more than a week ago.
The workers, previously employed on fixed-term contracts, were made permanent last year when the city converted the terms of their employment.
Two weeks ago the council, under the multiparty coalition led by the DA, took a decision to rescind the October decision, calling the appointments “irregular”.
Samwu also called a media briefing at their regional offices, demanding the coalition rescind its decision with regional chair Ester Mtatyana saying if they have to make the city ungovernable, then “so be it”.
“We're ready to challenge the matter in court and on the streets. If we allow this to happen, it will continue. To us, the DA showed us they're racist because all of the people they want to fire are black, meanwhile, there [are] whites who[se contracts] were converted and they're still in offices, working.
“We'll not let the DA do this and we'll fight as Samwu. As employees, we're not politicians and we don't want a change in [the] administration to affect us and if the administration in office is fighting with employees, we'll not fold our arms.
“We're not fighting with a certain political party but every time when there's a change in [the] administration there's frustration to the workers, " she said.
Samwu regional chairperson Mpho Sesedinyane accused Joburg mayor Mpho Phalatse of using council as a tool to harass and embarrass “young black workers in public”.
Sesedinyane said the conversion of the contracts was not done by politicians but involved the city manager's office, including Joburg's human resources and legal departments.
“The understanding is that HR and legal departments of the city were the responsible departments of the city and acted in line with the relevant policies and regulations applicable to talent acquisition in the city.
“Employees were not consulted in the process and only called in the final stage to sign permanent employment [contracts].
“It's clear the multiparty government is playing political games at the expense of young black lives. This is proven by the home notices imposed on a political notice.
“We're going to do everything in our power to prevent this bloodbath of job losses and the massacre of livelihoods by the government that only wishes to see white people swelling the ranks of the City of Johannesburg,” Sesedinyane said.
Joburg mayoral spokesperson Mabine Seabe said the city was not dealing with a political or labour matter but one of compliance with the law that was flouted when the former mayoral committee adopted a report, without council’s approval, to convert the fixed-term contracts of senior staff attached to political offices.
“The continued irregular employment of the political staff cripples the ability of the new administration to hire staff who share the same values as the government of the day, which will have far reaching implications for good governance and service delivery objectives as mandated by the electoral outcome.
“None of the staff who have been served with notices to regularise or return their contract to the original form of their employment are part of the city’s administrative functions. Instead, they were appointed and contracted at a senior level to serve political offices linked to the term of office of the elected politician they were attached to,” Seabe said.
He added that more information would be revealed after an investigation looking into the conversion of the contracts is completed.
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