Legal Aid South Africa employees and SALAWU members marched to Parliament over high workloads, understaffing, low salaries, and working conditions.
Seven years after Legal Aid South Africa employees first tabled grievances over salaries, workloads and working conditions, many of the same issues remain.
Legal Aid SA staff embarked on a two-day protected strike on 17 and 18 June after negotiations failed to resolve several disputes, most notably about retirement ages. IOL understands employees returned to work after the two-day action.
A comparison of memoranda handed to Legal Aid SA during industrial action in 2019 and again in June this year shows striking similarities in the concerns raised by employees, with retirement age, salary benchmarking, excessive workloads and consultation remaining among the union’s core demands.
Unlike the 2019 memorandum, however, this year’s document acknowledges that a number of longstanding labour issues were resolved under the current leadership. “The current management under the leadership of the CEO took over those issues and earnestly engaged with labour,” the memorandum states.
