Public service unions refuse to take part in 2023/24 wage negotiations

Government must not create confusion by calling for public service labour unions to return to 2023/24 wage negotiations when there was no agreement in the 2022/23 dispute, they say.

The unions said if they agreed to the Friday meeting called by the employer, it would mean they agreed with last year’s “pathetic” 3% increment.

Eight public service unions said on Thursday their negotiators would not participate in any Public Sector Collective Bargaining Council activity until the 2022/23 dispute was resolved.

In addition, they will push the state to improve on the rejected offer.

However, the Public Servants Association (PSA), representing more than 235,000 public sector employees, is not part of the eight. It issued a statement saying it had been mandated by its members to table wage demands for the 2023/24 financial year. 

In an offer tabled for 2022/23 and implemented by the employer, government paid a 3% pensionable salary increase to all employees on salary levels one to 12 between April 1 2022 and March 31 2023. It also paid a non-pensionable cash allowance of R1,000 for the same period.

The unions said in the last few months of 2022 they organised protest action to advance public servants’ demands.

“After butchering public servants in 2020/21 and 2021/22, in the current financial year of 2022/23 the employer still expects us to accept a pathetic 3% wage increase. Yet this is a financial year in which the cost of living skyrocketed as inflation hit a 13-year record of 7.8% in July last year and remained above 7%,” they said.

The unions added that Stats SA recently found inflation remained high at 6.9% in January.

“Clearly 3% is not a wage increase — it is a wage cut when taking into account the rising cost of living.

“We considered the unilateral implementation of this 3% increase in the middle of the dispute as yet another attack on collective bargaining and undermining of the workers’ representative trade unions.”

In addition to a demand for a 10% increase, workers also want a R2,500 housing allowance and the bursary schemes extended to children of public servants who are excluded.

They also seek access to a pension fund before retirement and an encashment of capped leave, among other things.

“To all of these demands, the government has refused to concede, and it has been months since the negotiations started, yet we still find ourselves at this point of a dispute.”

The unions said they were engaging members to mobilise for a strike.

Those involved are the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, National Health and Allied Workers Union, Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa, SA Police Union, SA Emergency Personnel Union, SA Medical Association Trade Union, National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers and Public and Allied Workers Union of SA.

The PSA said it would continue to engage with other unions to alert them that failure to start 2023/24 negotiations without delay would disadvantage public servants, who are increasingly cash-strapped and indebted.

“The future of the current R1,000 cash gratuity is at risk, taking into account that the employer plans to terminate this payment by March 31 2023.

“The PSA cannot afford to see the cash gratuity being taken away without any sort of replacement and recklessly further plunge members into a continued, old strike action that will further deepen their financial woes owing to the no-work, no-pay principle.”

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