Saftu rejects govt wage offer
The South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) has urged public service unions not to accept the 7.5 percent wage offer put on the table by government.
It says it's disappointed that more then half the public service unions agreed to the package - ending the protracted wage negotiations for the 2021/2022 financial year.
Saftu's Trevor Shaku says they don't believe the offer is truly a 7.5% increase.
"It is important to explain the intricacies in order to unmask the misleading presentation of this offer to the public servants. In this wage offer for 2023/24, the government is tabling a 3% as a new offer."
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"The 4,5% is merely a carry-over of the cash gratuity which has been paid to workers since 2021. The only difference now is that it is being translated from a non-pensionable cash gratuity into a pensionable salary on the baseline."
Shaku says government is pulling the wool over the workers' eyes.
"If the wage offer is accepted as is, workers will lose a further 3,1% to the buying power of their wages. In aggregate, workers would have lost a cumulative 14,3% in real wages over the four year period since 2020.
"It is in this context that Saftu supports the minority unions that are rejecting this offer, in favour of a more modest increase that takes into account the CPI rate and the losses of the past four years."
