LAC upholds sanc­tity of agreed job descrip­tions

In the case of IMATU obo Span­gen­berg and Oth­ers v Over­berg Dis­trict Muni­cip­al­ity and Oth­ers (CA09/2023) [2024] ZALAC 56; [2025] 2 BLLR 137 (LAC); (2025) 46 ILJ 321 (LAC) (15 Novem­ber 2024) the Labour Appeal Court (LAC) delivered a judg­ment rein­stat­ing an arbit­ra­tion award that had been set aside by the Labour Court (LC).

The back­ground dates back to Decem­ber 2012, when the employer adop­ted a Job Eval­u­ation Policy known as TASK, a grad­ing sys­tem developed by Deloitte.

By June 2015, all muni­cip­al­it­ies in the dis­trict signed a MOA to imple­ment the sys­tem.

By Novem­ber 2015, the Job Eval­u­ation Com­mit­tee (JEC) com­pleted its work, and its recom­mend­a­tions were approved by the Pro­vin­cial Audit Com­mit­tee (PAC).

However, in Decem­ber 2015, the muni­cipal man­ager hal­ted imple­ment­a­tion of the recom­mend­a­tions for about 12% of the work­force.

He cited incon­sist­en­cies, errors, and anom­alies, such as cer­tain admin­is­trat­ive roles being graded higher than oper­a­tional man­agers.

As a res­ult, some job descrip­tions were down­graded without affected employ­ees being given an oppor­tun­ity to make rep­res­ent­a­tions, which became the source of the dis­pute.

The mat­ter was referred to arbit­ra­tion. The CCMA found that the employer had com­mit­ted an unfair labour prac­tice by uni­lat­er­ally alter­ing the job descrip­tions and bypassing the TASK policy safe­guards.

It con­cluded the muni­cipal man­ager had no dis­cre­tion to revise Pac-approved eval­u­ations and ruled the revised eval­u­ations invalid.

The Arbit­rator awar­ded each affected employee R15,000 com­pens­a­tion and dir­ec­ted the muni­cip­al­ity to pay each one what they would have earned had the ori­ginal Pacap­proved eval­u­ations been imple­men­ted from May 2015.

The employer took the mat­ter on review. The LC set aside the arbit­ra­tion award, find­ing the Arbit­rator failed to con­sider the employer’s con­cerns or the pro­cess under­taken.

The LC ordered parties to sub­mit writ­ten rep­res­ent­a­tions to the PAC, which was tasked with a final and bind­ing choice between the ori­ginal and revised eval­u­ations.

On appeal, the LAC ruled that the LC had erred in this order as the PAC was not a party to the pro­ceed­ings and had no oppor­tun­ity to make sub­mis­sions.

The LAC held that the LC had exceeded its powers by dir­ect­ing the PAC to act as a ref­eree in a man­ner not con­tem­plated by the TASK policy, thus requir­ing it to act bey­ond its legal man­date.

The appeal was upheld with costs, and the arbit­ra­tion award in favour of the employ­ees was rein­stated.

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