Parliament said it had been vindicated by the Council for Conciliation‚ Mediation and Arbitration’s (CCMA) dismissal of the National Education Health and Workers’ Union’s (Nehawu) “application in relation to the payment of bonuses in 2015”. The union had‚ in May‚ threatened to strike if Parliament’s presiding officers do not meets its demands on the payment of bonuses and what the union claims were the “unilateral” reductions in the performance ratings of some employees.In a statement on Monday‚ Parliament said the CCMA’s award stated “it is the legislative duty of the Secretary to Parliament to ensure that the resources of [Parliament] are used efficiently”. “In this regard the fact that [Parliament] as an institution had not achieved its overall targets which [it] found irreconcilable with performance achievements of 91 [percent] of its individual employees‚” the statement further quoted.The CCMA appeared to have accepted Parliament’s argument that the “review of the performance scores was a fair measure and done in accordance with its policies as a result of inconsistency between the performance of the institution based on audited results by the Auditor-General and the individual scores of the employees”.Parliament also noted that the CCMA found there was no “no evidence that [Parliament] had acted irrationally‚ capriciously or arbitrarily‚ with bias‚ malice or fraud or had failed to apply its mind or unfairly discriminated against the applicants when the scores were adjusted in order to achieve the approval of the Secretary to Parliament”.“The ruling by (the) CCMA is a thorough vindication of the position of Parliament in its submissions and public pronouncements. Parliament’s management acted in good faith in its engagement with employee issues. It also exposes the unreasonableness of the local branch of Nehawu and those that joined in the unfair condemnation of Parliament‚” it continued.“Parliament hopes that this ruling will close the current chapter of negative engagement and help solidify a commitment to work together in transforming the institution to offer an even more efficient support service to Parliament in discharging its constitutional responsibility.”The legislature has been beset with Nehawu actions‚ including what it alleged involved “targeted media” being “primed and invited into an internal meeting” which was disrupted in June.The union also occupied the chambers of the Parliament during an unprotected strike of nearly four weeks late last year.The union had said it intended “to begin…rolling mass action” in June‚ and the strike could extend beyond Parliament to the provincial legislatures. The arbitration award..