If public-service unions want meaningful wage increases, they must be ready for a fight and possibly a strike, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi told health workers on Saturday.
”Serious battles are never won in the boardrooms,” Vavi told the National Health, Education and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) national bargaining conference in Benoni.
Vavi told Nehawu to decide what it wants to fight for and plan for that, including the possibility of a strike. Legislation prohibits certain civil servants from striking.
”Readiness for a serious fight means that we must also prepare. It means tackling the inhibiting nature of the minimum-service agreements that have disqualified far too many workers in the public service from exercising their right to strike.”
Vavi said wages are still low and the wage gaps too big. There is still not equal pay for work of equal value, and middle-level workers, particularly teachers, nurses and police, have seen only ”very slight” improvements over the past decade.
The departure of nurses to the private sector and overseas reflects a ”dire need” to improve health-sector wages, working conditions and management.
”Nurses start with a salary of around R5 000 a month — about the same as a skilled factory worker. There has been no genuine effort to ensure a review, and implementation, of a career path for nurses, leaving them with little or no prospects of promotion.”
At Chris Hani-Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, there is a staff shortage of 32% and across the sector there is a 27% shortage of health professionals or 46 000 vacancies, he said.
Vavi said the government has promised to grow the public service, especially in the big professions. ”Can we honestly say that the public-service unions have kept them to that promise?”
He said the worst-paid public servants earn about R2 500 a month, while this year parliamentarians would get an increase of almost 6% on R35 000 a month.
”The proposed increase would equal some R2 000 a month, which is more than two weeks’ pay for a level-one worker. The salary of a DG [director general] is in the region of R700 000 a year, or about R58 000 monthly, or R1 944 a day.
”People at the top seem easily to lose track of the reality of low pay for most workers. The democratic system has effectively maintained the massive wage gaps left from apartheid. Rather than questioning the overpayment at the top that typified apartheid, we have taken it over wholesale.”
Vavi said there is not enough career-pathing or training. ”The majority of workers still do not have adequate career-pathing. If you start as a cleaner in the public service, the chances are you will remain a cleaner your entire career.”
He said the sector education and training authorities have not delivered in the public-service sector.
Management and unions in the public sector should not be antagonistic, because the public sector’s political leadership were liberation-movement leaders and includes former union leaders, although this does not mean being ”sweetheart unions”.
”With this advantage we should have seen a transformation of the relationship and the creation of a new partnership that the unions in the private sector would seek to emulate.”
A number of public-service unions, many of them Cosatu affiliates, negotiate with a single government employer.
”We have employed a comrade to coordinate this work full-time. But the long-term solution lies in the creation of a cartel and one super union. Our main strength is unity not in countless logos and colours.”
Vavi said he was not going to discuss the ”mad media frenzy about leadership squabbles and divisions” in the run-up to the Cosatu national conference.
It has been reported that Cosatu is investigating Vavi for alleged misuse of a Cosatu credit card. Cosatu has denied any such investigation.
Vavi referred to ”character assassination campaigns against targeted individuals” and said he would not comment on this. — Sapa