More than 200 000 members of the Public Servants’ Association (PSA) will go on strike on Thursday after they rejected the government’s 6,5% salary increase.
“Members will down tools from midnight in pursuit of their salary and benefit demands,” PSA Cape Town provincial manager Koos Kruger said in a statement on Wednesday.
Public servants were demanding an 8,6% salary increase and a housing subsidy of R1 000 effective from April 1.
The government was offering a 6,5% salary increase and R620 housing subsidy with effect from July 1.
“The fact that the government’s offer to its core public-sector employees is so much less than the settlement rates in other public-sector institutions infuriated our members, who face the same economic realities as their colleagues in these sectors.
“The reality [is] that the real inflation on expenses such as electricity, food, fuel, clothing and healthcare gulps up more than 90% of our members’ disposable income.”
The situation informed their demands, which were regarded as reasonable and fair in the circumstances.
“Public servants in all sectors will be participating in the strike except for our members in essential services, on whom we call to act responsibly and to obey the law,” said Kruger.
The PSA foresaw major disruptions to key services, especially immigration services at airports and other ports of entry, deeds offices and non-court services at the Justice Department, where the PSA represented the majority of employees.
PSA members who would be on duty at the country’s ports of entry immigration offices and security officers in government buildings would stop working at midnight, said Kruger.
The PSA planned countrywide mass actions, including a mass protest march to Parliament in Cape Town on Thursday, where a memorandum of demands would be handed to a government representative.
While calling on labour unity from all unions in convincing the employer to meet the demands, the PSA trusted that public servants would show the same resolve they had in 2007, “when a major victory was claimed with that countrywide strike”.
Cosatu-affiliated strike
Meanwhile, unions affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) announced on Wednesday that they would also go on strike over the wage increment.
Fikile Majola, the general secretary of the National Education, Health, and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu), told a media briefing in Johannesburg that they would serve the government with a notice to strike.
The Cosatu unions, representing 56% of the 1,3-million public-sector employees, included Nehawu, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa, the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, the South African National Defence Union, the South African Medical Association, the South African State and Allied Workers’ Union, and the Public and Allied Workers’ Union of SA.
As part of the preparations, the unions would embark on a build-up programme of pickets, marches and demonstrations, which would start when the seven-day strike notice period expired.
Two major marches would be held in Pretoria and Cape Town on August 10, said Majola.
“We will meet on Friday and come out with a specific programme of action on the pickets, marches and a full-blown strike.” — Sapa