While President Jacob Zuma, in his state of the nation address, warned that the recession will affect the government’s ability to spend, public sector unions are waiting in the wings to demand better salaries from the state.
The looming wage-negotiation season will be the first real test for the relationship between labour and the Zuma government.
Government is expecting an easier negotiating season this year, but unions are saying they will not accept ”excuses” from the employer such as the recession.
Labour has, however, toned down talk of strikes and making the country ungovernable, saying these utterances should be seen as ”warnings” to government rather than ”threats”.
There was a broad expectation that the change in government leadership, both at presidential and ministerial level, would ease the relationship between government and labour. But the recession and problems with the implementation of the previous agreement signed between government and health workers in 2007 have put paid to that.
The occupation-specific dispensation (OSD) that former public service minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi put on the table at the 2007 negotiations to end the month-long public service strike ran into trouble from the word go. Implementation started with nurses, but some received a bigger salary adjustment than they should have while others were left out altogether.
”The perception that everything is well because the nurses’ OSD was implemented is wrong,” said Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa) spokesperson Asanda Fongqo.
The OSD promised in 2007 for doctors has not yet been implemented and frustrated doctors have embarked on wildcat strikes.
Unions have issued threats to make the country ungovernable, but leaders say this was to maintain legitimacy with their constituency. ”We have to respond to our members who are restless, otherwise we lose credibility,” Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said.
Sizwe Pamla, spokesperson for the National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu), said, ”[The threat of strikes] is more a warning than a threat. We issued a warning because we have to make government aware and make workers aware that their concerns are being taken into consideration.”
Trade unions are now more wary of government, Fongqo said, and to avoid a repeat of the mistakes made in the 2007 wage negotiations Denosa has set out to do its own research before the negotiations start. ”Government needs to make sure that their house is in order before they come to the negotiations table. The OSD had problems because the health department under-budgeted for it.”
Although the effect of the recession on government’s spending capacity cannot be ignored, unions feel Zuma threw industries a lifeline in his address to help ease the strain.
”There were measures announced to deal with the recession,” Fongqo said. ”So we are saying don’t use the recession as something to hide behind.”
But government is upbeat that the negotiation season will be more constructive than it has been in the past. Public officials experienced in wage negotiations cite the new-found trust between the government and the trade unions following the election campaign as a basis for fruitful negotiations.
”The willingness that there is now to listen is amazing. It is now negotiating season, so it is usual to find the rhetoric, emotions running high, but people are realistic. Although much noise is made, people are actually saying, please listen to us. We are talking every day, we are making progress,” said one official.
Government officials expect the negotiating parties to be less hostile to each other because labour has proved its loyalty to the ANC while government is seeing the labour movement in a different light.
”A couple of months ago things were different,” one official said. ”Unions felt sidelined, they were not taken seriously. They said the previous regime does not listen to them. Unions are beginning to say this is not an anti-labour government and government is seeing they are not the type of trade union that is hell-bent on chaos.
”The government may have previously had the attitude that they demand too much. Now both sides are finding each other and there is a whole change in the leadership style on both sides. You can’t ignore that the trade unions played a significant role in the overwhelming number of votes the ANC received in the last elections.”
The new wage negotiation season is due to start in July, but insiders say it will probably not take off until the issue of the OSD for doctors has been clarified.