Johannesburg — SA's public service salary negotiations look set to come to a speedy end with an agreement giving civil servants an 11,5% average pay rise this year.

There is a scheduled public service collective bargaining council meeting today , at which many of the public sector unions are expected to sign the agreement.

All the Federation of Unions of S A (Fedusa) affiliates, the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) and the National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union indicated on Friday that they would sign the salary increase proposed by the government last week.

At a meeting on Friday between the Public Service C ollective Bargaining Council and the unions, Fedusa's unions decided that the deal was acceptable and would be signed today, Fedusa general secretary Dennis George said.

However, the Public Servants Association deputy GM, Manie de Clercq, said his union was still consulting members to obtain a mandate. "From what has come in so far, and it's not the majority, it looks promising," he said.

Fedusa affiliates the Health and Other Services Personnel Trade Union SA , the SA Parastatal and Tertiary Institution Union, the Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysers Unie and the National Teachers Union have all accepted the salary increase offer.

The state proposed that the adjustment be implemented on a sliding scale of between 10% and 13%, averaging 11,5% for the 2009- 10 financial year.

The annual general salary adjustment for the next financial year will be based on the projected consumer price index (CPI), SA's main inflation measure, plus 1%. If the actual CPI is higher than the average projected CPI for that year, the difference will be added to the adjustment for 2011. Inflation is expected to fall back inside its 3% to 6% target range next year.

This was a fair trade-off for the promotion of decent work in SA, as well as the belief that the economy could be "mobilised" again if workers were paid more money, George said. Taking SA's July CPI inflation rate of 6,7%, public service workers will have to spend 6,7% of their 11,5% increase on food, transport, fuel and accommodation. That meant the effective increase was only about 4,8%.

"As you can see, this is not a huge increase but still the increase is necessary in enabling workers to spend money to stimulate the economic environment," he said.

Sadtu said the deal was " a victory for Sadtu, other unions affiliated with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) as it gave them what they had been asking for -- a double-digit increase. It also met the union's other demands," said Sadtu acting general secretary Mugwena Maluleke.

But Cosatu spokesman Patrick Craven said the federation would comment only when all its member unions had got the go-ahead from their members .