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COSATU Public Service Unions to March to the Department of Finance
16 April 2015
COSATU Public Service Unions Statement:
All seven Public Service Unions are united in action against the employer who is intransigent, arrogant and continues to negotiate in bad faith. To that extent, we are deeply disappointed that a three-day conciliation process with the employer, over wage negotiations, that began on Friday, 10 April 2015, has not yielded any results. This conciliation process came into being as a result of the employer declaring an unprecedented dispute in the middle of negotiation.
The state has so far, failed to meet revised labour’s demands or to reach the middle ground in order to find a solution to the ongoing impasse. Labour is still demanding a revised 10% salary adjustment and R1 500 housing allowance and the employer still offers 5,8% salary adjustment across the board. The employer still continues to drag its feet and is openly refusing to come up with a reasonable offer for consideration by our members.
This unfortunately means that after seven months of negotiations, the employer’s attitude has not changed and their level of ill-informed overconfidence and carelessness is increasing. We have always maintained that at the centre of the employer’s lack of cooperation and intransigence, is the Department of Finance. The biggest enemy of the workers and the working class in this country is the Treasury. They are prepared to bend over backwards to pacify the capitalist class and will do everything to oppress the workers so as to please the foreign institutions and ratings agencies.
The level of intransigence and arrogance displayed by the employer therefore comes from the mandate as dictated to by the Treasury. They have a clear and deliberate agenda to implement selective voluntary austerity measures. We regard these austerity measures selective because they are directed only to the workers and the poor and are meant to appease capital.
There is no other social strata that has been subjected to these measures except the working class. For the last two years, the Treasury has been leading an anti-worker agenda and has been making public declarations and statements vilifying the workers as well as treating them like a costly nuisance.
We find this not only mischievous but also deeply intolerable; we are clear that there is a concerted effort to reverse the gains of the workers and make their organisations redundant.
Government insists on adhering to discredited neo-liberal policies of GEAR that have continuously failed the poor majority of this country.
Every day, we are subjected to media reports of wasteful expenditure by government and reports of exorbitant profits made by private companies that are doing business with the state; the Auditor General’s report is full of stories about corruption and mismanagement of taxpayer’s money. The political class is ganging up against the workers and the poor. They continue to enjoy their ever expanding benefits and salaries and yet they refuse to give workers decent wage increases.
We refuse to be reduced to beggars and we won’t allow the employer to impose the percentage increase on us.
Our unions will conclude the on-going membership consultation processes by next week Tuesday. We are going to continue to engage with the employer with the hope of resolving this impasse amicably. But, the writing is on the wall for us that the employer cheered on by Treasury, are prepared to emasculate the unions and undermine the concept of bargaining.
From today, all our unions will be mobilising their members for a massive march in Pretoria to the Department of Finance on Thursday, 23 April 2015. We will also be having nationwide stay-aways, pickets and demonstrations in the other eight provinces on the same day.
This national march and countrywide demonstrations represent the unions’ first step towards taking our battle to the streets. Our patience is wearing thin and going forward, we will be left with no option but to abandon the boardroom and go to the streets fulltime.
End
For more information, contact:
Sizwe Pamla, NEHAWU Media Officer: 082 558 5962
Nomusa Cembi, SADTU Media Officer: 082 719 5157
