South Africa unions unhappy with government’s wage offer

A strike by 1.3 million South African public servants threatened Thursday to drag on for a third week as unions signaled that they would reject the government’s latest compromise offer, a wage hike that would be more than double the rate of inflation.

Zwelinzima Vavi, secretary-general of the main trade union federation, COSATU, said his organization had rejected the offer but that talks continued. Unions representing nurses, health and education workers, and police also said they would reject the offer, and other unions said they would follow suit in the coming days.

The strike, which started Aug. 18, has paralyzed public hospitals and left high school seniors, who face final exams in coming months, without teachers. Nurses who try to work and students who try to go to school have faced threats of violence from union members and supporters.

The government says it would have to increase its 6.7% budget deficit with borrowing to cover the 7.5% wage hike it proposed two days ago. The offer also included a monthly housing allowance of $108 for all workers. The annual inflation rate was 3.8% as of July, and the hike is predicted to fuel private-sector wage demands and strikes.

Unions are holding out for an 8.6% increase and a $136 housing allowance.

President Jacob Zuma was already taking widespread criticism for his handling of the strike. He was on an official visit to China in the early days of the strike when news media reported that premature babies had died in hospitals after nurses walked off the job.

On Monday, he ordered the government back into negotiations, which had broken down, prompting charges that he had blinked first in the showdown. The unions’ rejection of that offer leaves him and the government in an awkward position.

Zuma became president with COSATU’s support. But relations among his African National Congress, the federation and their traditional allies in the Communist Party have rarely been so bad.

Vavi, the federation leader, said last week that the alliance was on the verge of fracturing and that the country was turning into “a full-blown predator state, in which a powerful, corrupt and demagogic elite of political hyenas increasingly controls the state as a vehicle for accumulation.” He threatened to withdraw COSATU’s support from the ANC in local elections next year.

Public support for the strike is extremely low, analysts say, because of patient deaths, the effect on students and intimidation by strikers. The work stoppage has contributed to the steady dissipation of the pride and unity South Africans had felt for successfully hosting this summer’s soccer World Cup.

Public-sector workers on Thursday marched through Johannesburg, performing the toyi-toyi, a protest dance, and shouting slogans with raised fists. The march was peaceful, with a heavy police presence. One sign read, “7.5% can’t afford a prostitute.”

One Justice Department worker, a member of the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union, said public servants weren’t respected in South Africa and that many could not afford a decent house. He gave his name only as David, because workers had been told not to speak.

An editorial in Business Day newspaper contended that the government had caved in to COSATU’s pay demands, saying its offer hurt the unemployed and middle-class taxpayers.

Political analyst Adam Habib, deputy vice chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, said the government needed to pay higher public-sector salaries to retain high-quality employees.

He said a compromise deal, in which the government agreed to above-inflation increments spread over a few years, was the best solution, but it required that government officials curb their own salary hikes during that time.

“You can’t demand public-sector workers to be frugal if you’re not frugal yourself,” he said.

Habib said union leaders had tried to persuade members to accept the government’s offer, without success.

With growing fears of a prolonged work stoppage, he said, the government needed to decide which was worse: a bigger deficit or the strike dragging on.

“I think a prolonged strike would create far more instability and far more investor unease,” he said.

robyn.dixon@latimes.com

Pienaar is a special correspondent.