 Civil servants could strike after deadlock Cosatu demands 10% wage increase and then declares a deadlock which could lead to a national stay-away Less than a year after a strike that cost SA billions, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the Independent Labour Caucus, has reached a wage deadlock which could lead to another stay-away. The two organisations represent 14 unions and about 1,3-million workers in the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council. Labour caucus chairman Chris Klopper says the unions had wanted to stage negotiations earlier than last year, with the intention of avoiding labour actions such as a strike. "In the spirit of ensuring that this round of negotiations is concluded timeously, as labour we have tabled our initial demand of a 10% salary increase as early as February this year. The employer only responded on March 22 2011 with an offer of 4,8% which we rejected," the unions said. Since then, the state has raised its offer to 5%, then 5,1% and, most recently, 5,2%. Meanwhile, the unions have dropped their demand to 9%. Mr Klopper said the government was insulting its employees and SA itself with such a meagre offer. He said he could not sell the offer of 5,2% to any worker. While the unions say they would rather avoid any labour action, they are looking for an arbitrator to help break the wage deadlock. [email protected] -- 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] . |
