Cosatu demands Nene abandon caution on public wage bill

The labour federation also urged the government to unfreeze vacant posts and turn jobs within the expanded public works programme into permanent positions.

“We have not been able to make sufficient progress in the struggle to ensure decent work for all,” Cosatu said on the eve of the tabling of Treasury’s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement.

“Cosatu urges government to move away from its conservative fiscal and monetary approach. The economy is still too fragile and bleeding jobs.

“It needs government driven infrastructure expenditure to push and kick start it and to ensure the creation of badly needed decent permanent jobs for all. Now is not the time to reduce badly needed state driven infrastructure building and expenditure.”

Matthew Parks from Cosatu’s parliamentary bureau said while the federation appreciated government’s long-term efforts to reduce unemployment, which remains at 34 percent, state departments were abusing public works programmes to source cheap, temporary labour.

“Cosatu remains distressed that many departments and municipalities are abusing this programme as a form of cheap labour and in effect replacing what should be permanent decent work with temporary cheap labour.

“The EPWP/CWP (community works programme) should be absorbed in the departments and municipalities and made permanent decent jobs.”

Cosatu pressed Nene, who like his predecessor Pravin Gordhan has cautioned that the economy left little scope for growing the public wage bill, to abandon this approach and to ensure that parastatals scrap plans to retrench workers.

“Cosatu rejects Treasury’s fear mongering and blaming public servants’ wages for their fiscal constraints. Cosatu rejects the freezing of state vacancies,” said the labour federation.

“Public servants play a key service delivery role. They deserve and need to be paid a decent living wage, which includes above inflation annual increases. The filling of vacancies is needed to ensure government is capacitated to provide service delivery.”

On Monday, Nene said indications were that this year’s public service wage agreement would cost an additional R63.9 billion over the next three years, but that Treasury believed it could be covered within current expenditure limits, provided certain “reprioritisations” were made.

Cosatu in its list of MTBPS demands also warned Nene that it would resist any future tax increases that could negatively impact the poor, notably any hike in value added tax.

“Any attempt to increase VAT otherwise will devastate the poor. COSATU will resist this at all costs.” - ANA

(File photo: Gallo Images)