BL Premium reports that the National Treasury is pushing for new legislation to create a uniform compensation structure for all managers across the public sector as it battles to cut or freeze the wage bill.
The public servants’ salary bill is one of the biggest threats to SA’s finances, and slashing it is vital for the country to claw back fiscal stability and demonstrate its commitment to ratings agencies to keep spending in check. While there is already a structure in place that guides government salary levels, compensation levels are still largely at the discretion of the different spheres of the state. The Treasury wants a much tighter and more centralised approach to determining compensation. “Our view is that we need to come up with single legislation that will govern the issues of remuneration, especially as it relates to public entities. We can exclude the state-owned companies in that legislation because they need to run like businesses and compete with other big players in the industry,” Marumo Maake, a Treasury official responsible for remuneration analysis, told MPs on Tuesday. “With regards to entities that solely rely on government transfers, they should align themselves with the public service remuneration strategy,” he said. Maake explained that each sphere of government had its own remuneration approach, which was unsustainable. The Treasury’s push for the legislation could appease union leaders, who have raised the widening pay gap between senior public officials and rank-and-file public servants in their pursuit for higher wages. “We took a decision with the [department of public service & administration], after engagement with the labour unions, that we will embark on a process to review remuneration policies across all public sector institutions with the view of making recommendations to cabinet on a fair remuneration policy that can be adopted in the public sector,” Maake said, while also emphasising the need to contain the wage bill across the board.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Bekezela Phakathi at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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