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BusinessLive reports that with the government battling to contain its huge wage bill, public sector unions have warned the government that they will fight its attempts to freeze increases this year.
The next round of public sector wage negotiations is set to take place in the second half of the year. In July last year, public service and administration minister Senzo Mchunu raised the ire of public sector unions when he announced his department’s intentions to cut more than 30,000 jobs in an effort to reduce the state’s wage bill by more than R20bn. The unions say their members deserve better salaries and perks and they should not take the fall for the government’s shortfalls. They blame the current fiscal chaos on state capture, which has cost the country more than R500bn. Referring to the minister’s plea for unions to agree to some sort of pact for the government to freeze salary adjustments, Reuben Maleka of the Public Servants Association (PSA) said they had made it clear to him that they would not agree to such a position. Zwelinzima Vavi of the SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) said civil servants would never agree to no salary increases because for the past six years there hasn’t been a “real increase in their salaries”. Casper Nanto of Nehawu said Cosatu had agreed on a road map on how to deal with the upcoming wage negotiations in terms of which they would go to their members to get a mandate and then take the demands to the employer around July.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive
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