This week union federation Cosatu declared a dispute with government, setting the stage for a second public service strike in the Western Cape less than three weeks after the end of the biggest civil servant strike since 1994.
Cosatu’s provincial secretary, Tony Ehrenreich, said a second strike in the province ”seems unavoidable”.
”The Western Cape government are determined to discipline and dismiss union leaders and strike organisers; they’re the only provincial government deducting full salaries from striking workers, rather than staggering the deductions and they’re refusing to finalise a recovery plan for the teachers and learners trying to catch up on days lost during the last strike,” Ehrenreich said this week.
”On Tuesday we declared our dispute. Today [Thursday] we met with government and they sent their bureaucrats to the meetings — not one single politician arrived to talk to Cosatu and Nehawu [National Education Health and Allied Workers Union]. It shows their attitude and I think an agreement is unlikely and strike action is inevitable,” he said.
”We’re going through the motions to try to reach an agreement with the authorities, but next week Thursday we will start industrial action and we will strike again if government doesn’t come to the table.”
Ehrenreich made his comments following this week’s day-long meeting between Cosatu, the National Economic Development and Labour Council and the government to try to resolve the outstanding issues from the recent public service strike.
Unions said the Western Cape education department’s refusal to pay acceptable rates to teachers during the implementation of a recovery plan was one of the main motivations for a second strike. The recovery plan was developed to help learners catch up on classes missed as a result of the strike.
Ehrenreich said it was ”standard industrial practice” that once a strike ended workers worked overtime and were paid overtime to make up for lost production. ”It’s no different in the education sector.”
Sabelo Mali, chairperson of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union in the Western Cape, said its members were ”deeply disappointed” with government’s pay offer for teachers implementing the recovery plan.
”Firstly, we had to convince government that they can’t only implement a recovery plan for grade 12 learners — all learners were affected by the strike. Secondly, we’re saying that teachers should be paid a stipend of between R145 and R170 per hour for teaching over weekends and after hours. Government worked out a formula amounting to between R42 and R57 per hour before tax — it’s unacceptable. It’s ridiculous for government to want to exploit teachers like this.”
Mali said government needed to come back to the union with a better offer. ”We’re committed to the recovery plan and we’re very concerned about the fact that the recovery plan has not been implemented yet … We’ve reached a stalemate with government. We’re waiting for them to come and sit with us.”
Local MEC for education Cameron Dugmore said responsibility for the matter lay with the national education department. ”We didn’t work out the stipend — it was determined nationally. We’re implementing it — we can’t change it.”
Dugmore denied the department was dragging its feet in implementing a recovery plan. ”I think certain Cosatu leaders are unreasonable and I reject the accusation that the department is slow off the mark. It’s because we’ve been unable to reach an agreement with the unions that phase two of the recovery plan can be implemented only this following week,” he said.
Dugmore also denied that the ball was in government’s court. ”The unions asked for our calculation of the stipend and we’ve given it to them. They have to accept it.”