Johannesburg - The South African Local Government Association (Salga) says that there has been “meaningful progress” made in the effort to have a collective agreement for the 2021 salary and wage negotiations at the SA Local Government Bargaining Council.
This comes as government and trade unions are locked in intense negotiations over salary and wage increases.
The unions, which include the SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) and the Public Servants Association (PSA), had until Wednesday to indicate whether they would accept or reject the 1.5% wage increment offered by the government which also includes a non-pensionable gratuity of R978 before tax.
In a statement, Salga spokesperson Sivuyile Mbambatho said that negotiators had made meaningful progress towards reaching an agreement.
“This week the parties have agreed to extend the negotiations beyond the final round to allow the designated facilitator of the negotiations to formulate a detailed proposal to cover all the areas that are a subject matter of negotiations.
“Proposals developed by negotiations facilitators are very often effective instruments for facilitating an agreement when parties have mandated positions that are difficult to reconcile, as this has been the case with current negotiations, as with similar negotiations processes across the public sector,” Mbambatho said.
He added that the objectives of the facilitator’s proposal were to create a conducive environment for facilitating an agreement on the terms specified in such a facilitator’s proposal and to identify and register areas of emerging consensus.
Mbambatho said that the facilitator’s proposal was also to highlight areas where parties had to seek further directives from their constituencies and to bring the parties to an orderly conclusion of the negotiations and avert a deadlock.
“Salga remains cautiously optimistic that the outcomes of the latest round of negotiations may result in an agreement that is in the best interest of municipal sustainability and labour peace.
“The introduction of a facilitator’s proposal will afford municipalities yet another opportunity to consider the viability of the proposal made.”
Political Bureau