Volume 14, No. 17, 30 April 2015

In this Issue: Public Service bargaining: The way forward after a successful march

Red Alert Public Service bargaining: The way forward after a successful march

(Interview with Mugwena Maluleke)

By Umsebenzi Online, Labour and Development Bureau

If the negotiations reach a breaking point, they will severely affect the public in what will follow. This is why the support of the public and its solidarity with public servants is both necessary and crucial, says Mugwena Maluleke.

Comrade Mugwena Maluleke, the Convener of COSATU Public Sector Unions Joint Management Committee, Spokesperson and Chief Negotiator at the PSCBC on Tuesday 28th April 2015 | Picture by Umsebenzi Online, Labour and Development Bureau

Last week on Thursday 23rd April 2015 public servants marched on the streets of the City of Tshwane to the Department of Finance in support of their bargaining demands. This week on Tuesday 28th April 2015 the Labour and Development Bureau from Umsebenzi Online conducted an interview with Comrade Mugwena Maluleke, the Convener of COSATU Public Sector Unions’ Joint Management Committee, Spokesperson and Chief Negotiator. A teacher by profession, Maluleke is also SADTU General Secretary, SACP Central Committee Member and an ANC activist. The interview was held in the City of Tshwane at the offices of the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC), Centurion to reflect in detail on the negotiations which are underway and the way forward after the march.

The interview was held three days before the 2015 May Day, Friday 1 May 2015, to which this report is dedicated. Public Sector workers are expected to use this year’s Workers’ Day rallies to advance their negotiation campaign, consolidate support from other COSATU affiliates and Alliance partners, and rally the support of the public in general.

Comrade Maluleke please take us through the brief history of the negotiations, the duration of the current agreement being re-negotiated, the basic working and living conditions of public service workers.

The current collective bargaining agreement was concluded in 2012 after a negotiations process that lasted for eleven months. This is a three year duration agreement, valid from 2012 to 2015. It has expired at the end of March this year.

The current negotiations started in September 2014 with the aim of reaching a new agreement before the expiry of the current one. This has not happened because of the complexity of the negotiations.

The 2012 agreement covers the cost of living adjustment (Cola), which is referred to as the percentage increase across the board (ATB). It also covers benefits, such as medical aid and housing. When it was concluded there were however outstanding issues, including the all-important government employees’ housing scheme which we shall return to.

It was agreed that outstanding issues must be addressed within the three-year cycle of our collective bargaining agreement. This was however not achieved, except for the implementation of the Cola based on inflation plus a nominal increase of 1 percent.

Now we are on the seventh month since the current negotiations started last year to address the conditions of service which are inextricably linked with the living conditions of the workers.

Sectoral issues will be dealt with by the sectoral councils. At this level of the PSCBC we represent the entire public service, obviously because we are dealing with transversal issues. That would take into account issues such as salaries, benefits, medical aid, safety, recognition of prior learning, and other cross-cutting issues.

Take for instance the police who had another agreement, called OSD (Occupation Specific Dispensation) which has not been implemented. That has caused problems in the public service.

So the negotiations are impacted upon by other issues which have not been implemented by the Department of Public Service and Administration.

You also have a less number of police in the service than it is adequate, although the government has tried to recruit more police. But there is more pressure to deliver the service on the workforce precisely because of the sufficient workforce levels.

Go to hospitals and clinics. Check the number of workers who are there. Compare it to the demand for service by looking at the queues, at least.

Overloading impacts negatively on the quality of the service and the morale of the workers.

Take another example, the teachers in schools.

They are resigning in numbers.

The reason is that they are cashing on their retirement funds to address the financial pressures that they are facing at home. For instance they do not qualify for RDP houses, yet they also do not qualify for mortgage bonds. They are in an island. Their children do not qualify for the National Student Financial Aid Scheme either.

Then they end up taking the short cut to the notorious mashonisas (loan sharks, or micro lenders) to borrow money. The loan sharks as we know them for their predatory practices do not resolve but make the problem worse through exorbitant interest rates.

In general, while there has been an improvement in the last twenty one years since our 1994 democratic breakthrough we are still a long way towards achieving a balance in the conditions of service and employment of public sector workers.

All of these factors are taken into consideration when the workers formulate demands and the negotiating mandate.

And they are reasonable if you compare their working and living conditions to the demands. In the main they are looking for what would be reasonable as the demands and the level to which they are pitched do not comprehensively address their working and living conditions.

By the way we also still have low paid workers in the public service. We want this to be addressed by collapsing (i.e. merging) some grades. This will involve lifting those that are at the bottom rungs of the new grades which we are demanding.

What led to the outstanding issues not addressed in the past three years until the agreement expired at the end of March this year?

You negotiate with the Department of Public Service and Administration and agree that this is an outstanding issue. You further agree to the timeframes. The Department would not come back to present a proposal for addressing the issues.

Take for example night work allowance for security, recognition of prior learning for workers who have been doing the work but do not have papers, and the remuneration policy to develop a uniform job grading system in the public service. These issues have not been implemented.

So what you have is a structure that in itself is causing problems. For three years since 2012 for instance employee medical aid contribution has been increasing and therefore reducing the disposable income of the workers. But the employer’s contribution was not increasing.

In general the outstanding issues have been there since 2007, carried over from one negotiations cycle to another.

The Department has said it did not have the mandate to address the outstanding issues. This has always been the reason why those issues were not addressed.

But also there is a lack of seriousness by officials who further lack the experience of being personally affected, empathy for other people, and have no idea of the social impact that thus arises.

Sometimes negotiations run for too long and settlements are reached under pressure, in which case some issues tend to be left out as outstanding issues. What has been your experience in this regard?

At the time when the pressure mounts, focus shifts to what members want quickly, Cola. The other issues are relegated to a secondary position and end up being referred to processes.

But the other problem is the state budget.

Once the Cabinet adopts the budget it becomes policy. At the heart of this therefore our battle in the long run is to influence government budgeting – fiscal policy in those other words.

The budget does not take into account the outstanding issues from public service bargaining. When the Department of Public Service and Administration talks about no mandate, clearly the negotiations will therefore not reach agreement on those issues.

Are prolonged negotiations not an employer strategy though, knowing that there will come a time when labour is forced to reprioritise its demands and that at that time more focus will be on money and not benefits?

The employers are aware that one of the pressure points is that workers will at some point say we want money. They therefore buy time until that point is reached.

But to deal with that we have developed our own strategy.

Which is why the current negotiations are more difficult than the previous ones.

We are not compromising on all other issues. We want them to be addressed simultaneously in parallel processes as with the Cola.

So in terms of the structure of the negotiations is there a way in which a new process can be adopted to address time-buying tactics?

Yes. We can separate issues and go on strike on those issues where we can see that there is no progress.

But then one of the critical pressure points is the strike itself. Experience shows that once workers are on strike their focus turns on the ATB increase because they are not earning an income during that time. Did you look at this?

If we go on strike we will definitively reprioritise. But we will be building on our strategy to have all the issues to be addressed simultaneously. The rest of the tactics cannot be unveiled publicly.

This brings us to the demands now. What are the demands on the table?

Our opening Cola and ATB demand was 15 per cent based on a principle of double digits. We are now at 10 per cent, and we reserve our rights in terms of our opening demand.

The second demand is two-in-one to address the housing question.

The first aspect of this demand, the housing demand, is that all public service employees must be well-off to have their own house. We are demanding that the current policy which states that for partners working in the public service only one of them is eligible for the benefit must be abolished.

We are saying people did not apply for employment in the public service with marriage certificates (or magadi; lobola) but qualifications and the potential to perform the work. Still, all workers have their own rights, qualifications, potentials, and the employment relationship is between the individual worker and the state as the employer. It is not a collective family relationship.

The second aspect of the housing demand is the monetary value. Our opening demand was R3,000. This demand is underpinned by the Solomonian wisdom. In terms of this King Solomon principle, if the employer offers R900 and we must both move the movement must be equal on both sides towards a meeting point so that “no child dies”. In the present case the meeting point will be R1,500.

What is the third demand?

We are demanding that the employer’s medical aid contribution must be increased to 28.5 per cent to compensate for the last three years when that contribution did not increase.

But these issues are not reported in the public. They are not known outside there. What is the reason?

Yes. That is because the media is the main instrument of information flow. The media chooses which news or information it reports to the public. For example the media only reports the 10 per cent demand, but then even that in a biased manner. They say it is above inflation, but they never look into the working and living conditions of the workers, which, and who, they do not care about.

Consistent with the opposition, dominant media reports also say that the public service is bloated and must be “rationalised”. In essence this means increasing the unemployment rate by retrenching workers from the public service.

As we have already said, there are many areas in the public service which are understaffed with workers who are suffering from overload and demoralisation.

In fact there are workers who are jumping from the vessel into the private sector. In the process the state is losing scares and critical skills which further under-capacitate the public service by benefitting the private sector and capital accumulation.

The media is driving a privatisation agenda. This agenda strengthens the private sector at the expense of the public sector and public service.

The public needs to be aware of these issues and the causes of substandard service where that does occur. Otherwise the public service will be destroyed by misleading reports which dominate information flows in the public and could end up being believed as fact.

Okay. That is important. And then what is the fourth demand?

We are demanding bursaries for the dependents of public service workers as a guaranteed principle. The details and parameters should be worked out once the principle is agreed to.

These four demands are among your important demands?

Yes.

An interesting question. In the private sector the employers have their own demands too. Bargaining has become an exchange of labour-capital demands. What is the experience of the public service negotiation process on this approach?

The experience is almost the same.

Labour will always for instance present a demand for a one year duration of the agreement. The Employers is demanding a three-year duration.

And something we agree with wholly:

The employer is demanding youth employment. However no details have been provided.

Is there any coherent skills development strategy co-ordinating skills development throughout the state as a single integrated workplace with different branches, sectors, agencies and institutions? The reason for this question is that apprenticeships, internships, learnerships, experiential training programmes properly co-ordinated and supported can play an important role as opposed to a youth wage subsidy for instance. Skills programmes rather than the super-exploitation of the youth based on age can give them access to the work experience that they need. The programmes can also increase their employability or boost their potentials to start their own enterprises such as co-operatives and SMEs.

Definitely! We support these skills programmes.

But there is no state-wide skills co-ordination approach in the state.

There are Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) of course. But these have also hardly come together.

The coherence that is needed to support skills development on a state-wide basis including state owned enterprises for now can only be our vision. This issue has to be discussed in the PSCBC as we move forward. And of course in other sectors, in the municipal and state owned enterprises sectors.

How has the Department of Public Service and Administration responded to the demands? What offers is the Department tabling?

The Department offered 5.8 per cent in December 2014. But then this was revised downwards by 1 per cent to 4.8 per cent last month. This caused a serious problem to the negotiations.

And then what happened?

Following further engagements the Department has reinstated the 5.8 per cent offer but with new strings attached to reinforce the problem.

The department says 4.8 per cent is their projected inflation and that the 1 per cent returning the offer to 5.8 per cent constitutes a nominal increase. We still have a long way to go if things remain the same.

On housing the Department has moved from an opening offer of R900 to R1,100. We must meet at R1,500 as explained in terms of the Solomonian wisdom.

On medical aid there was consensus at 28.5 per cent. But the Department has since withdrawn the offer. Remember it has said it was withdrawing all the offers it has made.

But we also reserve the right to go back to 15 per cent in terms of our Cola and ATB opening demand. And of course on the rest of our demands.

So the approach adopted by the Department threatens to push back the negotiations to the first day. That will constitute a big waste of time, resources and energy.

And where do the negotiations stand presently?

The negotiations are presently under conciliation. The outcome of the conciliation will be presented in the bargaining chambers for consideration and final decision-making.

And what if there is still no agreement?

The Facilitators will issue a certificate in terms of which the negotiating parties can exercise their rights to industrial action. And we will at that point have no other option but to embark on a strike.

The reason why we have not rushed to a strike is that public service is a critical area to the people. They will be severely affected if we negotiate to go to a strike rather than to reach an agreement.

Think about schools, clinics and hospitals, services offered by government departments such as Home Affairs, etc. So the public has to understand that when we embark on a strike action it is because we are compelled to do so.

The public therefore has the responsibility for solidarity with the workers in the interest of uninterrupted quality services.

In fact some of the demands which we have mentioned are demands on behalf of the public as well.

Take for instance additional employment to improve the quality and effectiveness of public service.

That is important. Let us now deal with some political issues. There is a view by the detractors of public service workers, the academics and “independent” analysts who are backing those detractors saying that public service workers are enjoying patronage from the ANC-led Alliance and government. What do public service unions think about this view?

That is not true. Negotiating with the state is very difficult because it will always stick to its fiscal policy stance.

But do the SACP and the ANC support public service workers?

Definitely yes, politically. But that is a different matter altogether.

What then do public service unions believe informs that allegation?

People must understand that we are not negotiating with the ANC but the government of all the people. Workers in the public service are employees who are negotiating their conditions with the government as the employer.

There are some people in fact who are turning that unfounded allegation against its own head.

When we go on strike they say why are you striking against your own government?

Well. Private sector workers strike against their own employers too. The fact that they are negotiating with private employers does not mean that they are not dependent on that employment by the exploiters to make a living. Similarly, it does not mean that they are enjoying patronage from private capital.

That unfounded allegation is actually dangerous.

In fact it is a political missile to snipe at the Alliance of COSATU, the SACP and the ANC. It can therefore only be dealt with politically. And that will be done. That moment will come.

What is the message to the workers from the negotiations?

The workers are reasonable.

But they must prepare for a strike if the negotiations bear no fruits.

Any message to the public?

We are mindful of the fact that if we go on a strike action it is our people who will suffer from the breakdown of service provision as we have stated. The public’s support is therefore critical for the workers in this negotiations and that is what we are appealing for to our mutual benefit.

And your message to the government?

The government must respond positively to workers’ demands; boost the morale of public servants; retain experience; ensure that the salaries keep pace with the cost of living; narrow the gap between the workers on the shop floor and the officials in the offices.

Umsebenzi Online is the online voice of the South African working class based at the headquarters of the South African Communist Party (SACP), Johannesburg.

The COSATU Bloc
(Joint Mandating Committee, JMC)