State trampling on public servants’ rights

The government is trampling on the rights of its employees as it belatedly tries to take a second bite at negotiating a wage settlement.

Much noise will be made in coming weeks about what should have been done to avoid deadlock, as all indications are that this is where the public sector wage talks are headed.

By then, the series of errors the government has committed, plunging the talks into crisis, will be old news and strike talks by public sector workers will take centre stage.

Had the state stuck to processes it agreed to at the inception of the talks, which are provided for in the Labour Relations Act, it wouldn’t have ended up like this.

When the public sector wage negotiations started in September 2017, there was hope among the technocrats and trade unionists responsible for the difficult process that perhaps on this occasion a conclusion would be reached before the state’s financial year end.

That would have meant that by April 1 public servants would have received their wage increases and would not have had to deal with a taxation burden that accompanies back pay, as will be the case since an agreement was once again not reached on time.

This failure has seen the state dishonour its payment contracts with more than 1-million public servants. It also demonstrates the despondency and political vulnerability of trade unions. By not holding the state to account in several legs of the talks, the unions emboldened the employer to treat collective bargaining with derision.

When the Public Servants Association dissented and called for a dispute to be declared over delays and irregularities encountered during the talks, it was shunned by the other unions, including Cosatu affiliates, which felt that the process should be given a chance to fail before resorting to drastic action.

Cosatu quietly justified its stance by deciding it could not be seen to be sabotaging President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose bid to be ANC president it supported. Its biggest affiliate, the National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union, warned the government not to “undermine collective bargaining”, but that is where that protest ended.

Despite the patience exercised by public sector unions, a series of postponements initiated by the state, with no explanation, frustrated the process at the onset, with questions rightfully raised about whether the state was approaching the negotiations in good faith.

Just when that was resolved and organised labour came back from the December break looking forward to concluding an agreement at the beginning of February at the latest, Ramaphosa effected his first cabinet reshuffle, bringing an old face back to take over the public service and administration portfolio.

Ayanda Dlodlo, with all her experience as a former deputy minister in the department, brought in negotiators Clive Mtshisa and Kenny Govender, who were blamed for the collapsed talks of 2007 and 2010, which resulted in strikes that shut down the public service. She did not stop there but also presented a whole new wage offer without explanation, after the fiscal year deadline, for the unions to consider.

Labour may have managed to quash the new offer this week, but the bigger question is the government’s commitment to collective bargaining. The introduction of a new offer, despite the existing one on the table, shows contempt for public servants, who spent hours on considering the old proposal and amending their demands to meet the employer halfway.

Where is the fairness in that? Or even protection from “arbitrary action” by the employer? If the government can attempt to get away with contemptuous conduct, who will be trusted to show the private sector the way as other collective bargaining agreements gather dust due to employers’ disagreements over their terms?

The state has to decide if its role in strengthening collective bargaining is limited to what is said by its top officials on public platforms, when behind closed doors it undermines that very foundation. It also needs to show soon that it does have good faith; if not, it should be prepared to shoulder the burden of potential economic fallout caused by instability in the public sector. Mahlakoana is political and labour writer.