Hittler v eThekwini Municipality and Others

The applicant, Mr Shawn Hittler, an employee of the eThekwini Municipality, was subjected to disciplinary charges relating to procurement matters. He invoked section 188A(11) of the Labour Relations Act (LRA) to have the disciplinary enquiry converted into a pre-dismissal arbitration before the South African Local Government Bargaining Council (SALGBC). The conversion was approved by an arbitrator. While that pre-dismissal arbitration was pending, the municipality instituted further disciplinary charges and proceeded with a parallel internal disciplinary enquiry, despite a subsequent SALGBC ruling consolidating the additional charges into the section 188A process. Ignoring these rulings, the municipality continued with the internal enquiry and dismissed the applicant on 13 December 2024. The applicant urgently approached the Labour Court seeking to stay the disciplinary proceedings and, after his dismissal, to have the dismissal declared unlawful and set aside, with reinstatement.

The application was heard as urgent but was struck off the roll for lack of jurisdiction. The first respondent was ordered to pay the applicant’s wasted costs occasioned by the postponement and the costs of opposing the abandoned counter-application, on a punitive scale.

The case underscores the importance of properly pleading the legal basis for Labour Court jurisdiction, even where an employer’s conduct appears substantively unlawful. It reinforces the principle that the Labour Court cannot declare dismissals unlawful under the LRA without a pleaded contractual or legality basis, while also affirming that employers may not run parallel disciplinary processes once a section 188A pre-dismissal arbitration is properly instituted.