THANKFULLY, the public service strike is almost over.
When trade union representatives take an offer “back to their members" during a strike, it often means they will advise their members to accept the offer.
Not that members are obliged to accept it. It's commonplace for them to send their representatives back to the negotiating table, with minor points that need further negotiation and that stretch the strike out even further.
The public service strike has already taken three weeks, a long time for people with families to lose their salaries.
The big question is what will happen after the strike. Will any good come from it?
One of the principal causes of this strike was the unfulfilled promises made in 2007 to end the previous public sector strike. Government's salary offer then was an increase of 5.4%, which would have cost a total of R9bn, but in that year increases of 7.5% were also settled upon, which were calculated to cost the state R14.5bn.
The problem was that government had not budgeted for this amount – and to date most of the promises have not been met. In the current negotiations, in fact, a great deal of attention has been given to meeting outstanding promises.
Public Service and Administration Minister Richard Baloyi actually said that all the outstanding promises would be met by April next year.
The problem is that Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan will have to find money for it somewhere. And if Baloyi cannot persuade the unions that Gordhan has agreed to the proposal, he will not end the strike with these promises.
At the time of writing it appeared that this year's settlement would again be 7.5% – not that the rate at which wages are increased is the most important factor in the strike.
Another issue that was to have been resolved following the 2007 strike was the concluding of minimum service agreements in essential services sectors. In 2007 the disruption of essential services like hospitals was just as much a headache as it is this year, and after the previous strike this was to receive urgent attention. This never happened.
Axis of trade union power
It's to be hoped government has learnt its lesson this time. It has undertaken that minimum service agreements will be in place within seven months. Then future strikes in the public service ought not to threaten the lives of hospital patients.
The 2007 strike demonstrated unquestionably that the public service unions now form the axis of trade union power in the country.
It put paid to the political careers of Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, the then Minister of Public Service and Administration, and her husband Jabu Moleketi who, after the political defeat of former President Thabo Mbeki at the ANC’s Polokwane conference a couple of months later, found refuge in the private sector.
The big question is how these strikes will affect the relationship between the ANC and trade federation Cosatu.
Several observers have in fact attributed the strike to Cosatu's political aims, but this view does not hold water. Cosatu represents less than 55% of the country's public servants – the rest are organised within the Independent Labour Caucus that was established during the 2007 strike, and this group does not allow itself to be dictated to by Cosatu.
No, this strike, like 99% of all strikes, is the outcome of serious dissatisfaction right across the public service. The state is not meeting its obligations towards its employees, and the sector is being mismanaged, with the public service workers bearing the brunt.
Finger-pointing at trade unions regarding patients dying in government hospitals as a result of the strike is countered with the argument that this is not the full picture – that just as many or even more patients die because of the poor services, shortages of equipment and mistakes made by inexperienced and even untrained staff, even when everybody is at work.
This is appalling, but it is at least partially true. Anyone treated in a state hospital in the past five years knows this.
If the 2010 strike results in these conditions improving even slightly, it will mean that the unions' watchdog role over government is again increasing in the absence of an effective opposition.
Note that this is not Cosatu's role, but that of the unions as a whole, because the strike would not have succeeded in pushing government into a corner had it been a Cosatu-led campaign.
The 2007 strike was, however, an important precursor to what happened at the ANC’s Polokwane conference six months after the strike.
- Sake24.com
For business news in Afrikaans, go to
www.sake24.com.