Bargaining Council returns in June
Seven years after it was dissolved, the Public Service Bargaining Council (PSBC) is expected to return in June. The Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM) acting director, Omponye Kereteletswe told the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) last week that the promise was made by President Mokgweetsi Masisi soon after he came into office in 2018.
Though the promise was also reiterated during his party’s campaign before the 2019 general election, to this day the PSBC remains dissolved. Kereteletswe told the Dithapelo Keorapetse-led committee that PSBC, which has been a standing item for quite some time, will be in place soon. “For the year under review, there was some kind of stalemate. But I can safely say the PSBC is at a stage where it is about to reach its conclusion though not for the year under review.
We hope the matter will be completed very soon, and by very soon, I mean not later than June,” he said. Last year, the Botswana Federation of Public Private and Parastatal Sector Unions (BOFEPUSU) threatened to take government to court over its failure to ensure the revival of the PSBC. In their recent position paper ahead of the salary negotiations, six joint unions bemoaned the almost decade-long high tension between the employer and labour parties having been exacerbated by the employer’s failure to honour commitments emanating from the 2018–2019 round of negotiations. “We cite in particular, the failure to resuscitate the PSBC.
The employer party’s failure to resuscitate the PSBC is a direct consequence of an insidious strategy to encourage the proliferation of unions in order to weaken powerful unions. To achieve this objective, the employer party unreasonably insists on lowering the threshold for recognition at the bargaining table and according to votes of large and small unions equal weight.
The employer party does so in order to dilute the votes of the unions that have numbers, thus effectively weakening the voice of the majority of public sector employees,” states the position paper. BOFEPUSU deputy secretary-general, Ketlhalefile Motshegwa said they were delighted with the move.
“The PSBC was deregistered by government in 2015 after instruction from DPSM. We were against the move as it is an attack on Convention 98 of the International Labour Organisation, the right to organise, and collective bargaining. There was no formal structure for bargaining and we kept advising government to bring it back.
The resuscitation process took long because the DPSM were dragging their feet in a matter that could have easily been concluded,” he said. Motshegwa said there is conclusion to the constitution of the PSBC and that what is now left is for DPSM to register it. “We wonder what is delaying them from placing it before the Labour Commission because it has been completed,” he said.