Public servants have put on hold plans for further strike action after a working group set up by labour unions and the government re-drafted a proposed pay rise agreement on Sunday afternoon.
The latest draft provided for a 6,2% increase for public servants for this year and consumer inflation plus 0,4% for the following two years, a union negotiator said.
This was a change from a re-worked proposal drafted by the same working group on Friday — providing for six percent for this year and CPIX (consumer inflation minus mortgage costs) plus 0,5% for each of the following two years.
Both offers retained a sum of R500-million made available by the state to address the pay backlogs of teachers, and a one percent pay progression for public servants doing their work satisfactorily.
Sunday’s draft was presented to a meeting of the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) in the afternoon, which then adjourned for all parties to obtain mandates from their members and principals. Unions are to report back to the PSCBC on Wednesday, union officials said.
The Congress of SA Trade Unions said the new offer would be communicated to its members.
”In the interim, the [strike] action of 20 to 21 September [Monday and Tuesday] is suspended until further notice,” it said in a statement.
”The outcome of the communication with our members will inform the possibility of accepting or rejecting the offer.”
According to the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) the next three days would be used to consult union members on a mandate to accept or decline the new draft.
”This will practically mean workers will not be at work all the time,” it said in a statement.
”The employer must not treat this as a strike, but allow workers to attend big meetings and report-back rallies for purposes relating to the public service dispute.”
Nehawu’s special national executive committee has decided to accept a restructured R28-billion offer by the employer, the statement said. But the working group had to ”work on it to meet the most significant part of our demands”.
It confirmed that labour action has been suspended ”until further notice, to give our negotiators an opportunity to finalise settlement negotiations”.
Manie de Clercq, chief negotiator for the Public Servants Association — one of the eight public service unions — said the newest draft did not represent any increase in the government’s offer.
”It was merely a reshuffling of the resources the employer has made available,” he said.
It also did not represent a joint position, even though both parties were represented on the working group. ”Everybody reserved their rights before the working group started its work,” de Clercq said.
The government initially offered public servants a pay rise of six percent for this year and increases equal to CPIX for the following two years.
In order to pay for the new additions to the offer, the employer would have to delay the phasing-in of plans to extend housing and medical aid benefits to all public servants, government negotiator Kenny Govender said.
The provision of a home owner’s allowance of R403 to all one million public servants would now be phased in over five rather than the initially planned four years. Only about 220 000 public servants currently receive this benefit.
The extension of a medical aid benefit to all public servants, initially scheduled for next January, would be delayed by a year.
About 350 000 public servants currently do not have a medical aid.
These provisions were included in Sunday’s draft. Hundreds of thousands of public servants went on strike countrywide on Thursday in protest against the government’s pay rise offer.
They were demanding a seven percent across-the-board increase and better medical aid and housing benefits.
They were also unhappy with the government’s proposed inflation-linked pay rise offer for the next two years.
The unions had threatened to extend the strike to Monday and Tuesday if their demands were not met.
The parties reconvened the PSCBC on Friday — leading to the altered offer which unions rejected on Sunday morning. They then urged the PSCBC to reconvene the working group to re-work the draft agreement, which yielded Sunday’s newest draft. – Sapa