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Pay deadlock continues as parties maintain stance Shaun Mpshe, The New Age, Johannesburg, 21 April 2015 Operational budgets of departments will be negatively affected should the 10% pay hike demanded by public sector unions be conceded to. These comments were made by the spokesperson of the Department of Public Service and Administration, Brent Simons. Simons insisted that the government's wage bill was already set to increase from R400bn to R430bn making up 35.5% of the total public purse. "Any increase beyond what is budgeted will lead to borrowing for recurring expenses such as salaries and impact negatively on operational budgets of departments," he said. "For this reason, the employer believes that offer is fair and reasonable," he said. The government had offered 4.8% (CPI projected figure) +1% for 2015/16 and +0.5% in both the 2016/17 and 2017/18 financial year respectively. The unions remained adamant that they wanted 10% or a "real increase" above 5.8%. The Independent Labour Caucus (ILC) and COSATU affiliated public service unions disagreed and accused the state of being "intransigent and arrogant" in the negotiations. COSATU affiliated unions' spokesperson, Mugwena Maluleke insisted that service delivery could only be improved when the conditions of workers were made better. "We want an effective and efficient public service and therefore offering public servants 5.8% is not in the interest of an effective and efficient public service," Maluleke said. "You cannot have quality service delivery when you have employees who are resigning from the state because they are not happy about the condition of employment," he said. He vowed that unions were "going to mount one of the biggest marches on Thursday to the Finance Department in order to defend the collective bargaining process." Solid COSATU Power! Meanwhile ILC unions had been invited to the march and were seeking a mandate from their members on the march. ILC chairperson Basil Manuel insisted that pressure must be put on the government. "This indicates that the unions want a solution and don't want to go down what many fear to be a strike. So we are trying to find each another, but the state must come to the party as well," Manuel said. Simons said the state remained optimistic that the conciliation process underway would produce "mutually beneficial outcome" and that negotiations will conclude before month end. [email protected] From: http://tnaepaper.co.za/ -- -- 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.
