As unions and government remained locked in negotiations on Thursday afternoon to avert a widespread public-service strike next week, Public Service Minister Richard Baloyi announced that government had upped its offer to 7% (from 6,5%).
But as he did so, Cosatu in the Western Cape and Free State said they would start picketing immediately and continue tomorrow. And Cosatu in Mpumalanga, including teachers there, have already started picketing at their various workplaces, Fidel Mlombo, Cosatu provincial secretary in Mpumalanga, told M&G Education. Unions would accept an 8% offer, Mlombo said.
The country’s two largest teacher unions were unmoved by Baloyi’s 7% offer. Ezra Ramasehla, president of Naptosa, said his members had not yet accepted the revised offer because government has not moved its offer on a housing subsidy, which remains at 0.5%. “We have to apply our minds and consult quickly in a short space of time,” Ramasehla said on Thursday.
The union’s national executive committee would meet on Friday to consider government’s revised the offer, he said.
Nomusa Cembi, spokesperson of Sadtu — the country’s largest teacher union — said the union was still putting pressure on the
employer. “We have not yet accepted the offer and the meeting is still on going,” she told M&G Education.
Baloyi’s announcement on Thursday afternoon said government had been ready to sign off its revised offer on Wednesday night but that labour had requested a postponement to Thursday. The employer had therefore not been able to table the revised offer, Baloyi said.
The minister’s statement was distributed with a lengthy and minutely detailed annexure showing how the revised offer would be implemented at every salary level.
The parties held another meeting in the last week of July but still could not sign a deal after the state offered a R20 increase on the current R620 monthly housing subsidy and failed to budge on the wage increase and medical aid subsidy.
At the time Baloyi said government could not afford to meet labour’s wage demands because this would push the salary bill way above what the state has budgeted for. The state has budgeted R11,2-billion for salary increases and R845-million in housing allowances.
If the employer accedes to labour’s demands, it is projected it would spend R17-billion on salary increases alone and R3,5-billion for housing allowances.
The feeling within civil servant workers is that there is no reason why the state cannot meet their demands as it set a precedent by offering a 10% wage increase to other unions such as the South Africa Transport and Allied Workers’ Union and Solidarity, which organise within the state-owned enterprises.