A proposed pay increase of 4% to 5,3% offered to public servants is an insult, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) said on Monday.
”This is an insult to public-service workers,” Sadtu president Willie Madisha — who is also the president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) — told a press conference on Monday.
Madisha was speaking after Sadtu’s national executive committee (NEC) met on Friday and Saturday to discuss a programme of action for 2007.
Public-sector unions presented a demand for a 12% increase in October last year.
The NEC said it supported the call from other Cosatu unions to reject the offer — made by the Department of Public Service and Administration — and to start mobilising members for mass action.
The NEC also discussed the ”crisis” of pupils repeating grade 11.
Education Minister Naledi Pandor earlier this year said grade 11 pupils who had failed will not be able to repeat as new subjects — mathematical literacy and life orientation — had been added to the syllabus. She said the pupils must attend school on a part-time basis.
Sadtu said the situation cried out for additional resources, including teachers, training and support for the affected teachers.
Sadtu was planning to meet Pandor to find out what will happen to pupils currently in grade 12 on the old curriculum who fail at the end of this year.
The NEC decided that in preparation for the African National Congress policy conference and South African Communist Party elective conference later this year, Sadtu would reconvene its political commission to develop position papers and to convene a political school for the leadership.
The NEC called on Cosatu to request the ANC to increase the Cosatu representation at the policy conference.
The NEC also debated the need to combat ”the cancer of patronage and corruption”, which was ”rife at all levels of society, including within the liberation movement”.
Sadtu is the largest union in the public service, representing nearly two-thirds of teachers with a membership of 230 000, and the second largest union in the country. The NEC oversees the running of the union between congresses and national general councils. — Sapa