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COSATU firm on public sector pay rise Karl Gernetzky, Business Day, Johannesburg, 2 March 2015 Public sector trade unions have reiterated their rejection of the 6.6% increase in public sector pay which Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene has budgeted for. Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) chief negotiator Mugwena Maluleke warned on Friday that lack of progress in the public sector wage talks could result in a strike. The wage agreement between about 1.3-million national and provincial government employees expires on April 1. There had been hopes that a deal would be struck before the finance minister tabled the national budget last week. The negotiating parties remain poles apart with the unions demanding a 15% wage hike while the government has offered an inflation-linked increase. Credit rating agencies and economists cite the wage talks as one of the biggest risks to the fiscal consolidation strategy which the minister has set out. The strategy includes a hiring freeze and a slowdown in public sector pay. Last week's budget documents showed that unit labour costs in the public sector had risen more than 80% in real terms over the past 10 years. Also, most public servants were in the top 30% of earners nationally. The 16 unions in the negotiations, half of which are COSATU affiliates, have not formally revised their wage demand, but Mr Maluleke said on Friday that this was due to a lack of a suitable offer from the government. But the government has repeatedly said it has budgeted 6.6% for a cost-of-living increase for public sector workers. Mr Nene told journalists last week that he hoped that lower than expected inflation would help the government and unions reach an affordable wage settlement. Mr Maluleke said unions were ready to proceed with the bargaining, but no meetings were scheduled this week. The unions opened their demands with a 15% increase in a one-year deal. They had also demanded that the housing allowance, which has not increased for the past three years, be raised from R900 to R3,000 a month. From: http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/labour/2015/03/02/COSATU-firm-on-public-sec tor-pay-rise -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
