Labour Court orders TUT to address racial salary discrepancies

TUT Main campus in Pretoria West. Picture: Jacques Naude/African News Agency / ANA

TUT Main campus in Pretoria West. Picture: Jacques Naude/African News Agency / ANA

Published Sep 7, 2019

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Johannesburg - One of the country’s universities has been criticised by a Labour Court judge for failing to mend apartheid’s scars after paying some of its white staff better than their black colleagues.

The Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) must now retrospectively increase the salaries of professional nurses Paul Maraba, Lydia Khwinana and Matilda Legwale to April 2011.

Acting Labour Court Judge Sandile Mabaso found that the payment by TUT of Maraba, Khwinana and Legwale less than their white co-worker, identified as Sarina Kloppers, constituted unfair discrimination based on social origin.

Mabaso also ordered TUT to pay Maraba and Khwinana, who are no longer in its employ, retrospectively increased salaries dating back to April 2011 to the date of the termination of their employment with the institution.

Both payments must be made within 30 days of his order granted on August 23.

“The respondent (TUT) has not presented a valid justifiable ground for such discrimination, therefore its conduct failed to mend the scars of apartheid in respect of professional nurse practitioners,” he found.

The university was established through the 2008 merger of Pretoria Technikon, the Soshanguve-based Technikon Northern Gauteng and Technikon North West in Ga-Rankuwa.

They insisted that they were discriminated against based on social origin as Kloppers was from a well-resourced institution, Pretoria Technikon, compared to them coming from previously disadvantaged Technikon Northern Gauteng and Technikon North West.

The university’s legal team on Friday could not indicate whether the institution intended to appeal the outcome of the matter.

Politics Bureau

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