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Fin24 reports that the new round of public sector wage negotiations could be settled as soon as this week – should both government and the majority of unions each move by 0.5% at the next meeting of the Public Sector Coordinating Bargaining Chamber (PSCBC).
The wage offer for 2023/24 from the government is 7%, while an alliance of unions that form the majority in the chamber, namely those affiliated to the Federation of Trade Unions of SA (Fedusa) and the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), have moved down to 8%. The unions are expecting the government to make a new offer and appear ready to reciprocate. The 7% offered by the government is well above the 1.5% average wage growth that the National Treasury pencilled into the budget. However, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana stressed at the time that those numbers were not cast in stone as Treasury did not want to pre-empt the wage increase and wanted to ensure that in future wage negotiations were completed ahead of budget processes. The higher-than-expected wage offer has begun to fuel fear among economists that government's fiscal consolidation plans will be placed in jeopardy. But, head of the budget office Edgar Sishi said on Thursday that Treasury had always made clear that should the unit costs of labour increase beyond inflation, then the cost would need to be recovered in another way. "We have been saying all along that from a fiscal perspective, to the extent that the unit costs rise, there will be an impact on the headcount. That has been our focus for some time," he said. The implication of this would be that some of the non-critical posts in the public service would not be filled.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Carol Paton at Fin24 (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page