S. African trade federation threatens massive strike

CAPE TOWN, April 5 (Xinhua) -- The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) threatened on Thursday to paralyze the country with a massive strike if the public sector wage negotiations fail to achieve satisfactory results.

"We caution government against creating an environment that will force workers to consider withdrawing their labor and embark on what will be a calamitous strike," said COSATU, the country's largest trade federation with over 2 million members.

The consequences of such a strike will reverberate all the way to 2019 and the resultant resentment will muddy the political waters with dire consequences, said COSATU national spokesperson Sizwe Pamla.

COSATU, he said, has noted with deep concern the government's failure to take the public service wage negotiations seriously. The South African government has been criticized for deliberately delaying the negotiations.

At the negotiations, the government offered what COSATU said was "an inadequate offer" falling short of public servants' demand.

COSATU said the government's failure to take seriously these negotiations at a time when workers are already victims of an increase of value added tax (VAT) and the fuel levy will feed the rising tensions.

The last time South Africa's public service workers went on strike was in 2010. The strike lasted more than a month and the economy hemorrhaged billions of rands as a result.

"Workers across the board are united and if we are forced into a public sector strike, they will shut down this country especially since workers are still reeling from a very a hostile budget that has been presented by government," Pamla said.

The budget presented by the National Treasury envisages a spending ceiling or limit over the next three years to be imposed on the Public Service Wage Bill as an austerity measure. The plan is to reduce spending on salaries of public servants both in the national and provincial departments by 10 billion rand (about 840 million U.S. dollars) in 2017/18 and 15 billion rand in 2018/19.

This means drastic cuts in salaries for workers at the lower levels in the public service hierarchy and for public servants that are not in specific professional or vocational categories, or fall under the General Public Service domain.

In 1994 South Africa had about 1.4 million public servants servicing a population of 40 million and today the same number of public servants serve 52 million people. Currently the government is sitting with more than 150,000 vacancies in the public service.

"Public servants are already overworked, underpaid, stressed and highly indebted. This indifferent approach by government to their salary demands is a blatant act of provocation that will end in tears if not properly addressed," Pamla said.

Also on Thursday, Minister for the Public Service and Administration, Ayanda Dlodlo, said the government has no intention to delay the public sector negotiations process.

The negotiating parties are currently locked in a facilitation process under the guidance of the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC), according to Dlodlo.

The current round of negotiations, which addresses both the cost of living allowance and improvement of other conditions for public servants, is being undertaken under very difficult economic conditions, Dlodlo said.

The minister appealed for patience from all the public servants and the public to give negotiating parties sufficient time to reach an amicable settlement. Enditem