Civil servants reject wage offer

Johannesburg - A group of public servants has rejected the state's 5.3% pay offer, and now plan to declare a dispute on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Independent Labour Caucus (ILC) said.

"Public servants are also subject to the devastating combined effects of inflation, rising electricity bills, petrol price increases, and municipal service hikes which severely erode their spendable income and poverty is, as a result, becoming a growing reality for the average public servant in lower and middle echelons," said ILC chairman Manie de Clercq.

The ILC is a group of unions that represent over 40% of the public servants in the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council. The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) represents about 56 percent and the remainder do not belong to unions.

De Clercq said negotiations had deadlocked on May 20 when the state would not go higher than a move of 0.1% on its initial offer. The inflation figure for March was 5.1%. Unions had lowered their demand to 10.5% from 11%. The ILC includes the National Professional Teachers Organisation of SA, the National Public Service Workers Union, the Professional Educators Union, and the SA Policing Union and represents about 400 000 people, said De Clercq.

He told Sapa that members saw the inflation rate - which was not far from the government's offer - as a maintenance amount. But this did not take into account increases that were way above inflation such as electricity and fuel costs.

"We need a real increase, we need real growth."

Other aspects of the negotiations were a push for an increases in the medical allowance and an increase in the housing allowance from the current R500 a month to R1 650.

The dispute would be filed with the bargaining council, which had the same powers as the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, and the ILC hoped that the 30 days that then followed to give parties time to mediate the dispute, would yield a resolution.

If that failed, a strike notice would be filed and another seven days lapse. There would also be days in between to poll members for their mandates on how to proceed.

This meant that if there was a strike, it would be unlikely to affect the World Cup.

"We as the ILC never wanted to use the World Cup as a bargaining chip," said De Clercq. A Cosatu spokesperson was not immediately available to comment on their current position.