Public sector wage crisis: Govt appeals to CCMA, as union prepares to strike

• The Public Servants' Association officially served notice of a strike to the government in deadlocked public wage talks on Monday.
• This puts the union on course for its first strike in the public service in over a decade next week.
• The strike will be the union's first strike in the public service since July 2010, when the union successfully demanded an 8.6% wage increase.
• For more stories, go to the News24 Business front page.

The Public Servants' Association (PSA) is officially on the path to its first strike in the public service in over a decade after serving the government with a seven-day notice of strike on Monday.

The PSA announced that it filed the notice to strike on Monday morning "after exhausting all options possible to resolve the wage negotiation impasse". This comes after acting Minister of Public Service and Administration Thulas Nxesi indicated that he would invoke section 5(5) of the Public Service Act to unilaterally advance a 3% wage increase.

Indications also point to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana tabling a Medium-term Budget Policy Statement [MTBPS] on Wednesday that accommodates a 3% increase in public wages.

READ | Public sector wage crisis: Govt appeals to CCMA, as union prepares to strike

The 253 000-strong union said its members mandated that it reject the government's "ridiculous and problematic" wage, leaving the PSA no choice but to embark on industrial action. The union's last strike in the public service was in July 2010, when it successfully demanded an 8.6% increase and rejected the government's 6.5% offer.

"The PSA could not agree to a salary decrease for workers in view of uncertainty regarding the continuation of the cash gratuity beyond 31 March 2023.

"Even the offered 3% salary adjustment did not meet the expectation of the union’s members, owing to steep price increases for basic necessities such as petrol, food, electricity as well as interest rates increases," the statement said.

PSA national manager Claude Naicker told News24:

Section 5 of the Public Service Act allows government to enforce salary increases unilaterally, as long as doing to does not reduce wages and benefits.

The South African Democratic Teachers' Union is the only union that resolved to accept government's 3% wage offer.

READ | Teachers union breaks ranks, says it will accept govt's 3% wage offer

Meanwhile, Public Service and Administration director-general Yoliswa Makhasi wrote to the director of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration (CCMA), Cameron Mogajane, on Friday, asking that it urgently intervene to break the deadlock at the public service wage talks. 

"It is unfortunate that the draft resolution did not enjoy the majority support from labour," said Makhasi.

She said that with Godongwana tabling the MTBPS to Parliament on Wednesday, the department needed to conclude a deal to contain unforeseeable and unavoidable expenditures in terms of section 30 of the Public Finance Management Act.

READ | Risk of strike looms again as unions declare fresh public service wage dispute

She said reaching an amicable solution to the current impasse was "extremely urgent" to manage the risk of public servants not receiving any salary increases for this financial year, as the wage negotiations are not concluded before the MTBPS process. 

The spokesperson for the PSCBC, Oomang Parag, told News24 that the intervention by the CCMA at this point can only be by agreement between the parties.

"We are currently facilitating responses from the trade unions on their willingness to participate," said Parag.

Parag confirmed that the PSCBC had received the PSA strike notice.