Plans to bring the public service to a total halt on Friday are going ahead, said the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Thursday.
General secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said that all public servants will down tools on Friday to press for a 12% general salary increase.
His statement coincided with an announcement by the South African Municipal Workers’ Union that its members would mount a sympathy strike in Cape Town next week.
Another Cosatu affiliate, the Food and Allied Workers’ Union, said it was preparing for similar action.
Vavi told reporters in Johannesburg after Cosatu’s central executive committee meeting in Johannesburg there would be no services rendered in the public sector.
”We call on the workers in all sectors of the economy to hold lunchtime pickets on Friday in support of this total shut down.”
Vavi said unions affiliated to Cosatu would on Wednesday next week embark on a solidarity strike in support of the workers in the public sector.
”The public-sector strike will continue until the government comes with an improved offer.”
Public servants have been on strike since last Friday, demanding a 12% wage increase against the government’s offer of 6,5%.
Vavi called on the government to sign a minimum service agreement with unions so that no hospital was left unmanned during the strike.
He said that defeat was not an option for public servants in their dispute with the state.
”The implications of such a defeat to workers as a whole will simply be devastating.”
Cosatu will not allow that to happen.
Vavi said service delivery could only be improved by improving working conditions, better pay and more investment of resources by the state.
”The current strike is an expression of this poor pay and the government’s failure to implement some collective agreements.”
Vavi urged the government to make an improved pay offer so that a settlement could be reached.
Pay talks between the government and the unions are to resume on Friday.
‘Much more’
The ”narrow debate” on percentages did not do justice to government’s revised package for striking public servants, Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said on Thursday.
”The package offers much more,” she told reporters in Pretoria.
The government had shifted to a ”massive improvement” of 47% more than its initial offer, with a 6,5% wage increase, revised salary structures, housing and medical aid allowances.
However, ”not a single movement” had been seen by labour, which had kept its ”unaffordable” 12% demand on the table.
Under the state’s offer, lowest-paid workers would see an 18,7% total increase, she said.
Union leaders had not been ”visibly seen” reporting to members on the package, she said.
”Workers make an assumption that there is very little movement … rather than getting an indication of where there is movement.”
The state had sent letters to public servants outlining their package, she said.
”Public servants must access details of the offer.” — Sapa