This news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.
BL Premium reports that a former head of the National Treasury budget office, Michael Sachs, says that the public sector wage bill is not the key factor behind SA’s fiscal crisis.
Fiscal consolidation would lead to further withdrawal of core services, rather than an improvement in efficiency, Sachs said on Wednesday when presenting a webinar paper on the public service and the budget. He said there was very little evidence that the government’s employment structure was deficient, which was “a widely held view in public discourse”. Sachs said it was sometimes believed that government employees were overpaid and unproductive, and therefore reductions in their numbers and pay could be achieved without negative effects on public service. “Bloating, if it exists, is concentrated in political and executive offices, economic regulation, infrastructure services, and public administration — particularly finance and co-operative government,” he argued. Sachs’s comments come just as Enoch Godongwana, the finance minister, is expected to maintain fiscal consolidation efforts by keeping a lid on government consumption spending in his medium-term budget policy statement in a week’s time. Sachs said the solution to the fiscal crisis was not consolidation but a new path, where public sector pay could be matched with productivity. “What we need is a public sector compact that takes account of the needs and expectations of public sector workers, the pressure towards fiscal consolidation, and the needs and expectations of the user of public services that puts on the agenda a public sector reform agenda and save[s] the public sector in this difficult situation,” Sachs maintained.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Thuletho Zwane at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page