Sue Blaine
1 July 2009
Johannesburg — THE possibility of a teachers' strike looms larger as salary negotiations in the public teaching sector ground to a halt yesterday, with the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) saying it was "looking at" a strike, and the other big teacher unions talking of declaring a formal deadlock in negotiations.
Teachers across the board are outraged that the government has yet to finalise their version of the public service-wide Occupation Specific Dispensation (OSD), the new public service salary regime which was used to end 2007's month-long public servants' strike.
While Sadtu was canvassing its 235000-odd members regarding the possibility of taking industrial action, the Suid Afrikaanse Onderwysersunie (SAOU) and the National Professional Teachers' Organisation of SA (Naptosa) both said it was too early to consider strike action. It was, however, very likely a formal dispute would be declared, said SAOU general secretary Chris Klopper.
The final pieces of the teachers' O SD puzzle were to be put together by today -- the deadline negotiated at the end of the 2007 strike -- but the three unions, which collectively represent the greater majority of SA's 374000 teachers in public service, said they were open to negotiations, but unwilling to budge on their core OSD demands.
The biggest compromise is that today's long-awaited deadline has been waived in order to allow the government to rustle up the R1,5bn extra it would have to find to make up the shortfall in its OSD offer, said Sadtu acting general secretary Mugwena Maluleke during a break in negotiations yesterday.
The unions are demanding a 15% salary raise for this year and next to be added to the OSD raise.
Teacher demands as they stood yesterday would cost the government R8bn, plus the 15%.
The unions simply wanted to conclude the negotiations that started two years ago and the union did not buy the government's statement that there was no money to fund union demands, said Klopper.
"We believe the funds are available in the budget. The government must just shift funds forwards from 2010-11 and 2011-12, and there must be a commitment to ensure that there is no vacuum (in funding) in years to come," he said.
Public service salaries are negotiated on a three-year cycle.
When the OSD agreement was signed in 2007 several issues were left to be ironed out later.
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