The cash-strapped government, which is trying to rein in public spending, has until Friday to table a revised wage offer to its 1.3-million public servants, failing which the unions have threatened to declare a dispute that could lead to a debilitating national strike if unresolved.
The parties are set to meet on Friday at the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC), at which the government previously argued that its 2% cost of living adjustment offer and the R1,000 after-tax cash gratuity equate to 6.5% when combined. But the unions are not sold.
The meeting at the PSCBC, a platform for parties to discuss and agree on wages and other conditions of employment, comes as Cosatu and the Public Servants Association (PSA) trimmed their demand to 6.5% — excluding the cash gratuity — in July from an opening level of 10% in May.
Labour’s demand is in line with the 6.5% headline inflation rate the Reserve Bank has forecast for 2022.
The decision to move to 6.5% was viewed as labour’s willingness to reach a pay hike deal and avoid a repeat of 2020’s protracted legal dispute with the state over the payment terms of a multiyear wage agreement negotiated in 2018.
The Constitutional Court ruled in February that the government did not have to implement the last leg of the three-year agreement as the unions were “unjustifiably enriched” from the “impugned collective agreement”.
The judgment, which was widely watched by markets and ratings agencies, was viewed as a boost to the government’s budgetary commitments to restrict growth in the R665bn public sector wage bill, which eats up more than one-third of its spending, to an average annual rate of 1.8%.
Simon Hlungwani, convener of Cosatu’s joint mandating committee, told Business Day on Thursday that the government needs to table a revised offer on Friday as the 2% offer has been rejected by workers.
“Labour is united in demanding from the employer responsibility and accountability to the people of our country who rely on the public service. The employer cannot justify why public servants must accept 2% on a baseline increase, while the public office-bearers received 3% on baseline increase.”
Hlungwani said parties would head for a dispute if there was no revised offer from the government. He emphasised that if parties failed to find each other, “then a dispute process would unfold.
“It’s not advisable to pre-empt what will happen but if the employer doesn’t revise the offer, then it means parties are going to reach a deadlock, which will unlock the dispute process within the bargaining council,” Hlungwani said.
The dispute-resolution process would begin with conciliation and if no deal is brokered, move to arbitration and culminate in a strike certificate being issued if no common ground is reached. A strike could shut down schools, hospitals and government departments.
PSA assistant GM Reuben Maleka said on Thursday it was “encouraging” that other unions realised “2% was not adequate”.
Finance minister Enoch Godongwana, who has taken charge of the wage negotiations, told Business Day recently the state had tabled “a couple of items [but] part of the difficulty is that I’m negotiating now on a wage bill, but my budget is already cast”.
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