Johannesburg - The government and unions representing 1.3 million public servants finally signed a wage agreement at the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) in Centurion on Tuesday night.
The agreement comes after eight months of marathon talks which fell apart several times and faced multiple delays including after the death of then Public Service and Administration Minister Collins Chabane.
The talks even reached a low point when union leaders and negotiators threw government representatives out of the council chambers for negotiating in bad faith, following which unions threatened strike action.
According to the agreement, workers will receive a seven-percent wage increase this year, followed by CPI plus 1 percent in 2016 and 2017. The government also had to make a steep increase of 28.5 percent on medical aid contributions after neglecting to increase the fees for three years.
The Independent Labour Caucus’s (ILC) Basil Manuel told Independent Media that concluding the deal was not easy. “It’s been a tough road, the outcomes are as tough as the road has been. It is symptomatic of how difficult times are for everybody,” he said.
The end of talks was, however, not without its own set of drama. Members of the ILC in the council were still yet to sign the agreement on the Government Employees Housing Subsidy (GEHS). The unions felt that the scheme in its current form would not be able to address the issue of home ownership which many public servants struggle with as they do not qualify for bank issued bonds.
“We are definitely concerned with how the housing deal is going to be managed. There are too many ifs and maybes and that’s the issue. The issue is not that we are unhappy with the money that is going in, it is just the future we are concerned about.”
Cosatu unions, which are the majority in the council, signed the agreement, meaning the protest by those who refused to sign the agreement becomes inconsequential. Workers will now receive a R1 200 housing subsidy which was increased from R900. But doubts still linger, even within the Cosatu unions about the GEHS which is also silent on a critical part that has been the root of workers’ anger for years. The clause concerns married public servants between whom only one spouse qualified to receive the housing subsidy.
Despite the snag over GEHS, Manuel still believes the deal is the best they could secure for their members.
“The seven percent is in fact the best deal we could get under the circumstances, given the economy, our membership would have wanted more but it was just not possible.”
Workers will be backdated to April 1 and the difference in medical aid contributions since January will also be paid.
Labour Bureau