Public-service unions rejected a revised offer of a 6,5% pay rise by the government on Monday, saying it was nothing new.
Union leaders said at the end of pay talks in Centurion on Monday night they would come up with a counter proposal.
It was not immediately clear when negotiations would resume.
The state upped its pay offer to public servants on Monday to 6,5% at the Public Sector Coordinated Bargaining Council.
It also offered a general salary increase of consumer price inflation less mortgage costs (CPIX) plus 0,5% for next year.
The offer included the promise of revised salary structures for all categories of nurses, legally qualified professionals in the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development and revised salary structure for teachers and principals.
Other issues addressed in the offer included a revised night-shift allowance, medical subsidy for employees on the government medical allowance and the ”fast-tracking” of the implementation of the housing allowance.
”This is an increase of R4,4-billion from the initial offer, which is an extra 3,3% increase on the wage bill,” the government said in a press statement.
The new offer amounts to R13,7-billion, an improvement from R9,3-billion offer that was initially tabled by the government.
Talks were continuing on Monday evening and there was no immediate reaction from public-service unions whether or not they would accept the revised offer.
Minimal impact
Meanwhile, the public service strike on Friday had ”minimal” impact on the delivery of all except education services, the Department of Public Service and Administration said on Monday.
”The overall percentage of state employees [excluding teachers] who took part in the industrial action in national and provincial departments was in the region of 22%,” spokesperson Lewis Rabkin said in a statement.
While more than 80% of teachers stayed away on Friday, only 3% of national department staff were absent.
Rabkin said disciplinary action would be taken against those principals who closed their schools in contravention of the South African Schools Act, which stipulated that this could be done only by heads of provincial education departments.
He said immigration officers had been on duty at all ports of entry — except the Ramatlabana border with Botswana — and that all, including Ramatlabana, had been operational.
Rabkin was optimistic that continuing wage negotiations would lead to an agreement ”that is in the best interests of public servants and those whom we serve.”
Boycott
Earlier on Monday, union negotiators boycotted talks to end the strike after police used stun grenades to crack down on nurses demanding a living wage.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said in a statement that police fired rubber bullets that injured striking nurses at a hospital in Durban, calling it a ”brutal” attack. It said 12 nurses were arrested.
But Durban police spokesperson Superintendent Vincent Mdunge told Reuters stun grenades were used that did not injure anyone. He confirmed 12 people were arrested.
Mdunge said the situation was under control after reports that buildings and hospitals were besieged by picketing public servants in KwaZulu-Natal, where Durban is located.
”The number of strikers are reduced and a lot have gone away,” he said.
Union leaders had planned to resume talks with the government but their negotiators staged a boycott, Cosatu said.
”Police threw stun grenades at them [nurses], some of them are injured, as we are talking some of them are on the casualty here,” S’thembele Tshete, a regional union leader, told the South African Broadcasting Corporation outside of Durban’s Addington Hospital. — Sapa, Reuters