Cut costs from the high-earning top, Mboweni – unions

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and its public service union affiliates are up in arms over Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s plan to cut the public service wage bill by R27 billion over the next three years.

They called on the government to instead reduce the number of ministers, deputy ministers and government departments.

Cosatu accused Mboweni of negotiating with workers in parliament instead of tabling his proposals in the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council.

Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said: “No unilateralism will be entertained by the workers, and this will receive an obligatory pushback.

“Cancelling public servants’ performance bonuses without consulting them will only serve to demotivate these workers.

“This will weaken an already fragile public service and we are likely to see more skilled people abandoning it.

“The government is not assisting anyone by negotiating in parliament instead of using the appropriate platforms.

“If it wants stable labour relations then it must engage workers about their conditions,” Pamla said.

Cosatu, however, was pleased that the budget showed the public sector wage bill was appropriate and in line with international norms at 35%.

“This is in spite of the minister’s inflammatory and misleading rhetoric about it being a threat to the state’s survival,” said Pamla.

In his budget speech delivered in parliament yesterday, the minister said the first step was to allow older public servants, who want to go, to retire early. This would save an estimated R4.8 billion in 2019-10, R7.5 billion in 2020-21 and R8 billion in 2021-22.

Government has decided to scale up early retirement without penalties, with departments required to realise permanent savings of 50% of the cost attributable to early retirement cases.

Speaking on behalf of Cosatu public service unions, Mugwena Maluleke, who is general secretary of the South African Democratic Teachers Union, said the unions would challenge Mboweni’s announcement because it was based on the concept that the public service was bloated and it was therefore a financial burden when the opposite was true.

“They fail to understand that in a developmental state the public service is service delivery-oriented therefore there must be more public servants to serve the people.”

“The high wage bill is not a problem caused by workers, but by the high number of ministers and deputy ministers and the upper echelon of bureaucrats who earn very high salaries,” Maluleke said.

He said that if the government reduced the public service, there would be long queues at home affairs, clinics, hospitals and pension pay-points due to lack of staff, while schools would have a shortage of teachers.

“We don’t accept this narrative that the wage bill is a problem and must be cut because there are too many civil servants.”

Maluleke also mentioned that the money lost through corruption totalling about R400 billion was a factor that must be considered instead of cutting workers’ pay.

Cosatu welcomed the freezing of Cabinet members’ salaries and below-inflation increases for senior management.

“They are, after all, the ones who have mismanaged the state. However, this does not go far enough. National and provincial cabinets and mayoral committees can easily be cut by 50%, they should equally accept 25% salary cuts,” Pamla said.

Pamla also called for the salaries and benefits of state-owned-enterprises’ (SOEs) executives to be capped to the levels of the public service in order to reduce the growing salary gap.

“It is unacceptable to pay the SOE managers salaries of R8 million while many doctors are made to work 48-hour shifts because vacancies are frozen.”

– ericn@citizen.co.za

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