The wage increase offered to striking municipal workers was “meagre”, the South African Municipal Workers’ Union told the Mail & Guardian on Thursday.
Late on Wednesday night, the South African Local Government Agency (Salga) announced a revised offer to municipal workers of 6.3%, which spokesperson Tahir Sema slammed as insignificant. The government association had initially offered 6,08%.
He said Samwu would accept no less than a double-digit increase. Initially, workers demanded an increase of 18% or R2 000, whichever was greater.
The strike is nearing the end of its second week but negotiations on Tuesday and Wednesday night this week failed to bring an end to the impasse.
The strike didn’t receive widespread support in Johannesburg last week due to internal dispute within the union regarding financial irregularities. At the end of June, two Samwu branch members in Johannesburg were suspended for financial misconduct. Sema said he could not comment further on the matter, as it was being dealt with internally.
Last week Gauteng’s provincial secretary Koena Ramotlou criticised the media for focusing on the suspension, which he said had occurred more than a month ago.
Subdued
Strike action this week has been more subdued. Essential services workers in Pretoria returned to work on Tuesday and there were fewer reports of violence in Cape Town.
Union members trashed streets in Durban last week and in Cape Town protesters looted vendors’ stalls and set fire to rubbish bins.
Following a protracted and violent strike in 2009 — after which workers received a 13% increase — a multi-year legal agreement was put in place in an attempt to avoid strike action for three years.
The union and Salga agreed that staff would receive inflation-linked increase, plus a 2% increase each year. This set the 2011 increase at 6,08%.
But the legal agreement allowed for negotiations to restart if inflation fell outside the 5% to 10% range. Because inflation fell under 5% in June, the union used this to reopen negotiations, which led to the strike. Stats SA’s inflation figure for July is 5,3%, but Samwu said it did not consider this a reason to stop the strike.
Salga was not immediately available for comment on Thursday morning.
- Additional reporting by Sapa