Trade unions to begin talks with government on wage increases

Trade unions involved in the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council will start engaging government over wage increases in the public service sector wage increases in the public service sector from Friday.

Unions affiliated to Cosatu and Fedusa will consolidate their demands at the weekend before tabling their final wage demands to government on the fourth of next month.

Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund advised South African authorities to avoid above-inflation wage increases in the public sector as one of a number of mechanisms to reduce the country’s high debt and debt servicing costs.

Public Service Association’s, Claude Naicker says, “We will be sharing our papers, you know, the research that we’ve done, on the economic outlook and what we think is a decent salary increase and what have you. We will be doing that in a meeting with the employer itself. The employer has presented its paper on the economic outlook and their fiscal challenges. So, they’ve presented that to us the other day. So, we’ll be looking at that and we’ll be tabling questions.”