OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 7.00pm.
THE National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) on Tuesday rejected the government’s “unilateral implementation” of its final pay increase offer to civil servants, saying the move threatened future negotiations in the public service.
“This unilateralism is the worst type of labour relations practice reminiscent of the apartheid style of governance,” the union said in a statement released to reporters in Johannesburg.
The statement went on to say, “if this is allowed, the government will no longer enter into any serious negotiations with unions on any issue in future as they will constantly wield the axe of unilateral action.”
Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi announced on August 6, after negotiations with the 12 public sector unions deadlocked, that the government planned to implement its average 6,3% pay increase.
Nehawu president Vusi Nhlapo rejected the argument that the state’s implementation was above July’s inflation figures, released on Tuesday. “That is a pathetic argument. If we were still in negotiations and they tabled that we might consider it … but it is too late,” he said.
Nhlapo denied that the current impasse was a watershed for the Cosatu-ANC alliance, noting the ANC’s strengths in “ruling the country as a whole”, but blasting a “lack of finesse” in managing the public service.
“The question of the alliance does not arise because we are talking about a wage dispute and not about fundamental transformation issues,” he said.
Meanwhile the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union on Tuesday reiterated it would join other unions in the planned public sector strike on August 24 to protest against government’s unilateral implementation.
The strike by 69000 police and warders will be illegal as they perform essential services and are barred from striking in work time.