The mother of all pay talks, involving eight public sector unions and 1,1-million civil servants, is headed for a strike — again. In 1999, 2000 and 2001, this difficult wage round has gone into dispute and almost to strike. With six nights to go to reach a settlement, a strike seems increasingly likely unless cool minds and heads prevail. Workers have been balloted already.
There is no easy villain of the peace in this dispute: the government is between a rock and a hard place — as are the country’s civil servants, who deliver crucial services in return for salaries that have not kept pace with the market. Many of the country’s finest nurses, teachers, health aides and civil servants have already upped and left for the private sector or for the far more lucrative shores of the United Kingdom, Dubai and Australia, where salaries make Minister of Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi’s rates look like a joke.
It is a shame that teachers with 15 years’ loyal service and experience take home R3 500 a month; that nurses who perform such an essential service earn even less. But consider the minister’s position too: staff costs still soak up almost one in every three rands available for public spending. These costs continue to crowd out funds available for grants, housing, water and electricity. The public sector wage bill is R131,7-billion for the fiscal year 2004/05.
The government had hoped to contain its wage offer at 6% in order to use the savings to be able to compete with the private sector for the maths teachers, theatre and intensive care nurses, police inspectors, superintendents, forensic scientists and prosecutors the public service needs.
No citizen can deny that the public sector (and therefore the country) is dying for these skills. Two solutions might stave off a strike the country can ill afford. The first is for the government to stop tactics that have irked the labour negotiators, like lobbying workers directly and trying to use bilateral negotiations to break the strength of the central bargaining unit. Another is for both sides to moderate their demand by half a percentage point to achieve a settlement of 6,5% — still lower than increases in the private sector average of 8% this year.
That will still cost an unbudgeted R500-million, but it will leave something in the kitty to pay for the scarce skills. And as he prepares his medium term budget policy statement, Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel might consider increasing the budget deficit to 3% (in line with global best standard) in order to find and fund the happy medium.
Viva the whip
President Thabo Mbeki has often been accused of spending too much time polishing his reputation as a philosopher king and not enough on the dull, difficult details of policy implementation, but there has been a very different air about him since April’s elections.
In a State of the Nation address that read like a project management document, Mbeki tied his political legacy to a robust timetable for delivery and he has implemented a system of executive oversight and public scrutiny that has his Cabinet hopping.
As the deadlines he outlined in May begin to fall due, there are real signs of progress in both economic reform and social delivery.
The dramatic liberalisation of the telecommunications market announced last week is long overdue, but that doesn’t make it any less welcome. Metal fatigue in the national transport system will not be as easy to remedy.
Transnet is the spinal column of the economy and it has been more than a slipped disc or two.
Its chiropractor-in-chief, Maria Ramos, has taken on ruinous debt, an unwieldy structure and a culture that appears to combine the worst features of an obstructionist old-guard and a complacent new management. Her turnaround programme has all the elements of a good start.
There are distinct signs of life in the Cabinet social cluster too, with Lindiwe Sisulu proving a dabber hand at housing than she was at the dark arts of intelligence. Her plans for the development of integrated human settlements with a represent a real advance.
Not all Mbeki’s targets are being so diligently met. Nothing has been heard from Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula, and the special task team that was to snare the top 200 criminals.
And no amount of pressure from the presidency is likely to rescue the Sustainable Rural Development and Urban Renewal Programme. Already R5-billion has been diverted into work creation and infrastructure developments with no measurable impact. Perhaps it is time to admit that this presidential plan must be drastically overhauled, or replaced.
The deadlines currently exercising government departments relate largely to the final phases of planning.
Over the next five years the hard targets begin to fall due. We should soon begin to see the fruits of almost 11 years of planning. Employment should grow, growth rates shoot up, and the misery of poverty diminish. Only then will Mbeki’s legacy be writ. Viva the whip.