She is the first South African Public Service Minister to declare a dispute with powerful public service trade unions — and Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi’s audacious move a week ago has now divided the representatives of 900 000 public servants.
While the 170 000 skilled and still largely white members of the Public Servants Association (PSA) stuck to a joint original demand for an annual increase of between 12% and 13,4% this year, the Congress of South African Trade Unions-aligned public servants backed down substantially.
The South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) reduced its demand to 10%, while the influential National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) had by Thursday reduced its demand to an 8,4% package increase. This includes a wage increase and improvements in medical aid and pay progression.
With the more militant unions in the mood for bargaining rather than toyi-toying, it is unlikely that white workers will have the appetite for strike action on their own.
The unions are frothing at Fraser-Moleketi, who has often played hard-ball during negotiations, but do not seem angry enough to strike. Instead labour leaders say they were caught off guard and had thought negotiations were proceeding as peaceably as they can in a sector notorious for fractious labour relations.
”We find it absolutely absurd that the employer can be so arrogant in declaring a dispute because they have never come up with an offer that is reasonable,” said Shireen Pardesi, Sadtu’s national negotiator. The government, with a keen eye on the national inflation target of between 3% and 6%, pegged its offer at the projected inflation rate of 5,4% this year.
Sadtu and Nehawu are the biggest unions in the seven-member core group that bargains on behalf of workers in the public service bargaining council.
The wage round will be good for three years and Fraser-Moleketi made it clear in June talks that workers can expect no more than inflation-based increases in 2005 and 2006 as well.
An independent mediator has been appointed to oversee next week’s last-ditch talks, though unions believe that the minister is aiming to unilaterally implement the increases that are due on July 1. Negotiations often overshoot their deadlines and pay is backdated.
”The public service compared with the private sector has lagged for quite some time now. Therefore our argument is that while it may sound absurd, one must take into consideration the lower adjustments [of previous years],” said Anton Louwrens, the general manager of the PSA.
By Thursday the PSA was standing firm, suggesting a schism between black and white workers. In addition to higher wages, the PSA also wants the government to increase the size of the housing subsidy paid to civil servants from R70 000 to R200 000 — a calculation based on the property boom. And the PSA has a separate dispute with the government to force it to increase medical aid contributions in line with the medical inflation rate.
Part of the reason for the split in the bargaining unit is that the concerns of the lower ranks of largely black workers are much more basic.
”Many of our members do not enjoy housing benefits; and many who are entitled to medical aid are not getting it,” said Nehawu secretary general Fikile Majola.
Fraser-Moleketi has refused to countenance an increase in the existing housing subsidy but is keen to bring more public servants into the home ownership net.
She is standing firm on current medical aid contributions because the state has put out a huge tender for the provision of medical aid by the private sector.
”More than 60% of the public service is not on medical aid and those who are on it exhaust it by April each year,” said Pardesi.
The ball is now back in Fraser-Moloketi’s court. If she plays it hard and implements her offer unilaterally, as she did in the late Nineties, labour is likely to up the ante. ”At the moment, we are confident [that the parties] are quite close, but the question of a strike could arise if the government implements unilaterally,” said Nehawu spokesperson Moloantoa Molaba.
n Meanwhile, the National Union of Metalworkers has threatened strike action in the motor industry, beginning on July 26, unless the employer, the Automobile Manufacturer Employers Organisation, moves higher than its 6,5% wage offer.
The unions are demanding 9% across the board. The union will also meet with the Steel Engineering Industry Federation of South Africa (Seifsa) next Friday.
Seifsa is offering a 4,7% wage increase and Numsa is demanding 12%. If the dispute remains unresolved, the Engineering Bargaining Council will issue a deadlock certificate for the union to strike on July 29.