Fin24 reports that the four-day Public Service Summit commenced on Monday, with public servants setting the tone by chanting "Asinamali" [We have no money].

The workers, whose relationship with the government has come under strain after years of rising tension over wages, said the collective bargaining process in the public sector was under attack. The Summit comes after the Constitutional Court ruled at the beginning of March that government did not have to pay the increases in terms of the final leg of the public sector wage agreement reached in 2018. National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu) president Mike Shingange said government's move to renege on the agreement, and the Court's decision to side with it, meant the future of collective bargaining agreements was no longer guaranteed and salary negotiations under the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) could be rendered futile.   According to Shingange, even the future of PSCBC as a negotiating forum was at stake. "We are here to defend collective bargaining as a process, to ensure that the outcomes of negotiations at the PSCBC don't end up being vetoed by Treasury," he explained. Public Service and Administration minister Ayandla Dlodlo said the government knew that trust had been broken but it believed there was still a relationship to salvage with labour, with prospects of moving towards understanding each other better. Dlodlo said the government was not attacking collective bargaining as it too believed that collective bargaining must be defended, and where there were limitations, they must be addressed.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Londiwe Buthelezi at Fin24

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