Do state employees have the contractual right to have their wage agreements honoured by the government?
The labour court will have to answer that question when public sector trade unions bring their legal challenge to the government’s refusal to pay wage increases in line with the final year in a multi-term wage agreement.
While it would have raised few, if any, eyebrows in the private sector to refuse to increase or even cut wages amid difficult economic times, it is uncharted waters for the public sector to not honour a wage agreement.
Finance minister Tito Mboweni pencilled in huge cuts to the public sector wage bill in February in an attempt to trim the budget deficit. But the public sector unions were not on board when this decision was made and took it as a declaration of war.
Since then the government initially maintained that it had no money to pay the agreed increases, but then it made another offer which the unions rejected.
The increases in the final year of the three-year wage agreement signed in 2018 would have taken effect on April 1, if the agreement had been honoured.
The court challenge has been in the making since it became obvious on April 15, when state employees received their salaries, that there would be no pay rises. Until that point civil servants were left in limbo as to whether they would receive their increases or not.
Almost two months since it became clear that the government would not pay the increases — and two months since the economy ground to a halt as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown — five public sector unions have taken the matter to court.
On Friday, the Public Servants Association (PSA), the National Professional Teachers Association (Naptosa), the Health and Other Services Personnel Trade Union of SA (Hospersa), the SA Teachers Union (SAOU) and the National Teachers Union (Natu) filed court papers to challenge the government’s decision not to implement the wage agreement.
The unions have asked the labour court to declare that the government’s failure to implement the salary increases provided in the agreement at the public service co-ordinating bargaining council (PSCBC) was in breach of the contracts of employment of the applicants’ members.
The trade unions want the court to order that the salary increases, effective from April 1 2020, be implemented. They argue that their members have “a contractual right to have their salaries increased”, according to the founding affidavit in the challenge.
Mugwena Maluleke, chief negotiator for Cosatu’s public sector unions, said on Sunday that the federation’s affiliate unions have applied for arbitration at the co-ordinating bargaining council after conciliation failed. He said the matter has, however, not yet been set down for arbitration and that they were awaiting a date from the bargaining council.
Maluleke, who is a co-drafter of the first constitution of the PSCBC, says there is a precedent for the government unilaterally implementing an increase, as was done when Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi was minister of public service & administration.
However, it is unprecedented that the government is not implementing a signed collective agreement. Maluleke added that it was also the first time the government had applied to review an agreement.
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