In what could be seen as the government’s final move to have the public-service wage dispute solved through talks, it gave unions a deadline of 6pm on Wednesday to accept its revised ”settlement offer”.
The settlement salary package includes a 7,5% wage increase.
The government has warned that should unions not sign the offer by 6pm on Wednesday, it will revert back to its previous offer.
Its previous offer included a 7,25% increase but did not contain many of the other benefits included in the settlement offer, such as a drastically improved housing allowance or the collapsing of certain lower salary scales into higher ones.
It also did not include any agreements on the workers’ situation on returning to work.
Neither government’s chief negotiator Kenny Govendor nor Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi’s spokesperson Lewis Rabkin were willing to make comments when they left talks at the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
However, Chris Klopper of the Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysers Unie said the message was clear.
”We have reached the end of negotiations and I can not see any movement beyond this evening,” he said when talks ended after 2am on Wednesday.
PSA chief negotiator Tahir Mohammed said: ”It’s over, it’s finished … it is a sad day for the public service”.
He said unions still had a choice in that the strike could continue.
”Labour is definitely negotiating staring at the barrel of a gun, and that is something we do not take kindly to,” he said.
Union negotiators would meet with their leaders during the course of Wednesday to finalise their reaction to the proposal.
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union had already indicated that it would reject the government proposal.
”If the employer does not improve the offer, we would have further disruption of schools,” Don Pasquallie said.
A full sitting of the PSCBC is expected to convene at 6pm.
‘We will not settle for anything’
Meanwhile, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said the time had come for a settlement.
”We share the sentiment [of] almost everyone in the country that 19 days [has] been quite long … from every respect we need to settle, [but] we will not just settle for anything … that would be detrimental.
”We will not settle for anything that will make members feel that all the 19 days that they put [in] … have been for nothing,” Vavi said.
Violation of rights
Meanwhile, the dismissal of a group of striking Western Cape health workers was a violation of their patients’ constitutional rights, the Cape High Court has been told. The claim is made in papers by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in an urgent application to reverse the sackings.
The application, filed last week, was to have been heard on Tuesday, but was postponed by Judge Siraj Desai to Thursday to allow the TAC to reply to the state’s answering affidavits. It is being brought by the TAC and five residents of Cape Town’s Khayelitsha, two of whom are HIV-positive.
According to 2005 figures, one in three mothers-to-be in Khayelitsha is HIV-positive.
The respondents are the Western Cape health minister Pierre Uys, national Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, and Fraser-Moleketi.
In a founding affidavit, TAC organiser Mandla Majola said the dismissals of the 41, all from Khayelitsha clinics, had resulted in an ”unlawful and unreasonable curtailment of health services”. – Sapa