Vuyo Mvoko
PUBLIC service workers took to the streets of Pretoria this week, giving the government a sharp reminder that the potentially explosive wage dispute in the sector is still on the boil.
And the dispute is causing mounting embarrassment for Cosatu’s National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu), whose continued attempts to reach a peaceful settlement with an immoveable government have drawn charges that it is a “sweetheart union”.
Nehawu condemned a march by about 400 members of the obscure South African Health and Public Service Workers’ Union (Sahpswu) in Pretoria on Tuesday to highlight demands for a R1 500 minimum wage and a 15 percent across-the-board increase.
Sapa reported that they were joined by more than 30 staffers from President Nelson Mandela’s Pretoria residence, before being dispersed by police.
And in Cape Town, a threatened hospital strike largely by coloured members of the Public Servants’ League failed to materialise. The union complained it had been prevented from overseeing the counting of strike ballot papers.
The protest by the 1 000-member Sahpswu — which largely represents clerical staff — had no visible effect on the running of government departments. But its demands are shared by a number of other white-collar unions, including the overwhelmingly white Public Servants’ Association (PSA), which is currently balloting its 100 000 members.
The PSA has warned of a strike within weeks. An official of the association this week said there was overwhelming support for a strike action, but that the ballot count had been delayed by the Christmas break.
Caught between its loyalty to the ANC-led government and the grievances of its 50 000 members, Nehawu condemned the Sahpswu strike as “nonsensical” and “premature”.
The union rejects the percentage increase demanded by the PSA and its allies as widening the apartheid wage gap, insisting that the salaries of “the upper echelons should be frozen”. It wants a phased minimum wage of R1 200 this year, R1 300 in the next and R1 500 the year after, for all remuneration packages below R60 000 a year. At present the lowest-paid worker gets R900, and the government has offered R1 075.
One executive member said the union’s attempts to negotiate a settlement were coming up against growing militancy from members who “obviously feel betrayed when they look at the (government) gravy train”. Nehawu president Vusi Nhlapo said while the union was trying “by all means to avoid a showdown, it still remains a possibility”.
Nehawu was consulting its allies in the ANC, the civics and the trade union movement.
Referring to Sahpswu — whose members had received a 20 percent increase last year while Nehawu members had received four — he said: “We have no time for such hypocrites. When we fought the National Party regime, they were loyal to it.” Nehawu’s initial response to the deadlock in pay talks last year was to threaten strike action, and it has staged marches and demonstrations to the offices of provincial premiers.
It now says negotiations have not been exhausted. However, the only shift in the government’s position was to recommend the creation of task teams to investigate the dispute, following last month’s encounter between public service unions and the two deputy presidents, Thabo Mbeki and FW de Klerk.
The state and representatives of the 19 employee organisations have still to establish a working group to draft the terms of reference of the task teams before they can be be appointed.
Nehawu rejects the teams, arguing that they will deal only with wages, and not with broader issues such as the Public Service and the Labour Relations Acts which the new government simply “reproclaimed and spread among nine instead of the previous four provinces”.
Instead, it is demanding a statutory Public Service Forum. It says that in the current bargaining forum — the Central Chamber of the Public Service Bargaining Council — “mass-based and truly representative unions like us are held to ransom by tiny groupings of rightwing and other reactionary groupings”.