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Johannesburg - The SA Municipal Workers' Union supports striking Nehawu members at Netcare and Unisa, Samwu said on Friday.
"Nehawu [National Education Health and Allied Workers' Union] has tabled reasonable demands in order to ensure workers are able to afford the price increase of basic necessities," spokesperson Tahir Sema said in a statement.
"We encourage all unions not to back down from demanding a decent living wage and to ensure employers give the workers what is required to dig themselves out of the trenches of inequality."
University of SA strike
Nehawu members at the University of SA went on strike on Tuesday after rejecting a 5% salary increase offer.
Unisa's campus in Sunnyside, Pretoria, was closed on Thursday because of the strike, spokesperson Martin Ramotshela said at the time.
Sema said the university had re-opened negotiations with Nehawu.
Ramotshela could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday.
Netcare strike
On Tuesday Nehawu workers at Netcare also embarked on a strike. In January, Nehawu demanded a 15% wage increase, but Netcare only offered 5%. Workers rejected the deal.
"We therefore revised our demand to 12% as mandated by our members and the employer responded with a revised offer of six percent," Nehawu's spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said on Tuesday.
"The negotiations continued and the union revised its demands to 11%, with the employer responding by offering 7.2%."
Netcare's group human resources director Peter Warrener said at the time the protest had not drastically affected daily operations.
"A small portion of Netcare's nursing staff, who had already received their increases, participated in the strike action... Where needed contingency plans have been put in place."
