BusinessLive reports that Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) Minister Senzo Mchunu will face off with angry union leaders next Tuesday at a meeting aimed at averting a potential wage strike by about 1.3-million public servants.
The meeting, expected to run until 30 April, will be held at the Public Sector Co-ordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) and comes about two weeks after the government reneged on a multiyear wage agreement signed in 2018. The first batch of public servants, including nurses, pharmacists and lab technicians, received their April salaries on Wednesday last week without the increase agreed on as the last leg of the PSCBC agreement. Finance minister Tito Mboweni announced in his February budget that about R160bn would be cut from the state wage bill over the next three years. Before President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to impose a lockdown from 27 March, the government had hoped to renegotiate the third year of the wage agreement and projected a saving of R37.8bn in 2020. While the government did put out a revised offer of a 4.4% pay increase for some levels of workers, unions rejected this and elected to lodge a dispute in the PSCBC.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive
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