WHY SNAT BELIEVES CMAC ERRED IN VOTES

MANZINI – The Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) has revealed why it believes CMAC committed an error when compiling their balloting results.

SNAT Secretary General Sikelela Dlamini said according to balloting results which were issued by the Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration Commission (CMAC) on Monday, the commission made an error by comparing the number of their members who had cast their votes against the total membership of the union.

He said this logic was in utter conflict with Section 86 (6) of the Industrial Relations Act of 2000 (as amended) which says consider the simple majority of those who had cast their votes.

In fact, the secretary general said during the balloting process for the 2017/18 cost-of-living adjustment (CoLA) strike, the commission used the number of SNAT members who voted to calculate the simple majority.
He said according to the aforementioned results, the total number of SNAT members was 11 191 and those who voted were 6 233.

Voted

He said the results reflected that those who voted for the strike were 98.63 per cent, while only 0.98 voted against the industrial action.
He said the remaining 0.39 per cent votes were spoiled.

On the other hand, the secretary general said this year, the CMAC results reflected that the total membership was 12 222 and those who voted were 2 432.
He said it also showed that out of the 2 432 who had cast their votes, 2 384 voted for the strike, while only 34 opposed it. The remaining 14 votes were spoilt.
However, he said when calculating the percentage, CMAC divided the number of the members who voted for the strike by the total number of SNAT membership and multiplied it by 100 to get 19.5 per cent.

Strike

“If CMAC calculated the percentage according to the law as it did in 2017/18 CoLA balloting exercise, it was going to divide the number of members who voted for the strike by those who had cast their votes and multiply it by 100.

“This is to say, CMAC was supposed to divide 2 384 (members who voted for the strike) by 2 432 (total members who cast their votes) and multiply it by 100 and get 98 per cent of members who were for the planned industrial action,” the secretary general said.

He added that this formula was going to give them results which would mean that out of the total members who cast their votes, 98 per cent of them voted for the strike, which was something that would give them the green light to engage in the proposed industrial action.

Action

The secretary general added that by comparing the number of members who had cast their votes against the total membership, allegedly made the commission to assume that those who did not participate in the voting process, were opposing the proposed industrial action.

Furthermore, the trade union accused CMAC of being incapacitated to conduct the balloting exercise by itself.
As a result, the union leaders said they had to transport the commission staff members and lend them other working tools like laptops.

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