Why+we're+ready+to+strike,+Shireen+Pardesi,+Mail+and+Guardian

Mail and Guardian, Johannesburg, //20 May 2007 11:59//
=Why we're ready to strike=




 * Shireen Pardesi**

The biggest public service strike in a decade now seems unavoidable. All unions have rejected the government’s paltry offer of a 6% wage increase, with no improvement to other critical conditions of service.

Government presented its last offer on May 3. Unions representing more than one million workers refuse to accept salary increases limited to inflation targeting, which represents no real wage increase -- and in some cases, a continuing real wage decrease.

If the employer sticks to its inflexible attitude, the public service will sink further into conflict. No self-respecting union will sign such an offer, which their members will refuse to accept.

Government’s national budget increased in nominal terms this year. This means the state must be able to find the funds for a greater percentage increase. This is possible if there is the will to do so. But the current 6% offer amounts to inflation adjustments plus a real wage increase of a mere 0,5%.

South Africa’s continuing high levels of inequality, established under apartheid, are not unique to the private sector. There is a growing gap between the lowest-paid public sector workers, who receive an annual salary of about R36 000 a year, and the highest-paid employees, whose salaries exceed R700 000 a year.

The Moseneke Commission recently recommended some salary increases in excess of 30%. Yet the South African wage gap is still the highest in the world, and rather than questioning the overpayment at the top that typified apartheid, the current regime has taken it over wholesale.

In the 2005 public service agreement, the average wage increase was 6,1%. CPIX came in at 4,9% in May 2006 and CPI at 5,4%, but food inflation currently exceeds 8%.

In fact, the lowest-paid workers in the public sector have experienced a real wage decrease because a higher percentage of their disposable income is spent on items such as food. There is a serious need to improve the starting-salary scales for the lowest-paid workers. Keeping employees on the current levels 1 and 2 is destructive.

The government’s offer to address housing allowances in 2009 is insulting: there are no proper houses on the market that sell for R70 000. This has effectively reduced public servants to victims of a restrictive government policy that allows capital to benefit from rents collected on unaffordable homes. The housing allowance has been fixed at the interest of a R70 000 bond since 1991 despite house prices trebling over the past five years.

The medical-aid contribution has been frozen since 2000 in open violation of the 1998 agreement. To restrict members to the Government Employees’ Medical Scheme is a violation of public service employees’ “right of choice” as enshrined in their conditions of service. To add insult to injury, the employer adamantly refuses to recognise the need to adjust medical aid as a benefit, and does not use the collective bargaining arena to market its own product.

Unions were forced into the government’s unilateral decision on pay progression. This has created widespread dissatisfaction at all levels. Moreover, there is no career- pathing in the public service.

There is a serious lack of capacity on the side of the employer to implement a system that should be developmental in order to improve performance. Instead, workers are irked, to say the least, when they are subjected to evaluation purely to restrict progression pay to 1% of the salary bill.

While unions are preparing for full-blown industrial action, they are also committed to finding a settlement in the interest of avoiding a national crisis. Clearly, at the heart of the looming showdown lies a crisis of trust in the relationship between the government and public servants, which 10 successive years of wage negotiations have failed to resolve.

Unless there is a will to invest in public servants, there will never be a human resources development infrastructure in sync with our economy’s need for skills. So balloting for strike action is now under way, and unless the basic demands of public service employees are addressed, there will be a strike.


 * //**Shireen Pardesi** is vice-chairperson for labour in the public sector coordinating bargaining council//


 * From: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=308936&area=/insight/insight__comment_and_analysis/**

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