For years, Melanie Berg’s entire salary for teaching at Bethvale Primary School was just enough money to put some food on the table – often only bread or porridge.
Berg, 49, of Bethelsdorp, is one of the hundreds of teachers who were employed by a school’s SGB despite vacancies being budgeted for with the department of education.
When she started at the school in 2001, Berg earned R1,200 with this eventually increasing to R4,500 by 2014.
“I am still under debt administration because we just could not survive and I had to borrow money. I just spent my teacher’s salary on food.”
She said for dinner her family – her husband and three children – would eat either porridge or bread.
“It was through family and the grace of God that we survived,” Berg said.
“Our electricity would be repeatedly cut off. The bills would just pile up.”
Berg said she often skipped payments to her children’s schools to make ends meet.
“I then resorted to selling some stuff I had inherited, just to stay afloat.”
She was eventually employed as a grade 1 teacher by the department with her salary increasing to R21,000 in 2015.
Berg now has a chance to be reimbursed by the department for her years as an SGB teacher while budgeted vacancies existed at the school.
This, after the Grahamstown High Court certified a class action on January 8, which, if it succeeds, could see the department paying out thousands of rands to SGB teachers who believe they were short-changed in the salaries they had received since 2010.
But this significant legal victory by the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), acting on behalf of the teachers, may prove hollow unless those teachers opting into the class action can prove their case was not prescribed.
SGBs have for years been forced to fund the filling of vacant teaching posts that the department had failed to advertise or fill.
Most of the cash-strapped schools paid the teachers considerably less than they would have earned had the department appointed and paid them, as it was required to do.
Judge Clive Plasket agreed that the class action should be certified. If the LRC proves their case, teachers could get their salaries supplemented retrospectively plus 37%, which is the cash value of medical aids and pension benefits.
The certification of the class action means teachers in a similar position who had been disadvantaged by the salary difference can join in the action against the department. Berg intends joining it.
“I was told in 2010 the department would make us permanent but then I just heard nothing.”
Berg said she bought a three-bedroom house with the belief that her new salary would cover the bond.
“Instead of being happy, I spent a lot of time crying when that job never materialised.
“My husband then took care of the bond and I had to find money to cover everything else. That is when I started borrowing money.”
Berg’s former principle, Clive Martin van Vuuren, confirmed she should have been hired permanently in 2010.
“I was the principal when she was an SGB teacher and there were vacancies,” he said.
LRC lawyer Cecile van Schalkwyk said Berg sounded like a perfect candidate for the class action.
“We would just have to verify everything as there might be an issue with prescription.
“However, she seems to fit the bill.”
Van Schalkwyk said they would soon be publishing details of the class action, which would also call on teachers to contact the LRC.
The LRC also launched an application for seven teachers to force the department to pay them the difference between their salaries and what they would have been paid if they had been employed by the department. But this was dismissed by Plasket.
Arthur Grootboom, Muhammed Ramlan, Chere Bouw, Joy Williams, Jesintha Coltman, Candace Steyl and Elana Hughes had worked at schools in Port Elizabeth and Stutterheim.
Plasket dismissed the application on the basis that they had not brought their claims within the required three years.
In 2014, a class action resulted in the department being ordered to refund some R100m to 122 of these schools that had been forced to pay teachers who should have been in the employ of the department.
The court also ordered the department to permanently appoint these teachers.
The teachers who filled these posts at such low salaries said it was unfair that they were paid less than they would have been if the department had employed and paid them as it should have.
Plasket said the seven teachers had failed to give notice of the application to the education department in terms of the Legal Proceedings Act.
Legal claims have to be brought within three years of the person’s becoming aware that they had a right to claim.
He said they had all known since 2014, if not earlier, that they had been short-changed but waited until January 2018 to launch their case.
Department spokesperson Malibongwe Mtima could not be reached for comment.