SA Public Workers Defer Strikes After Improved Wage Offer

[Im The Truth]

South African public workers defer strikes after improved
wage offer

20 September 2004 0644 hrs (SST)

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stori...107506/1/.html

JOHANNESBURG---South African public workers, who last week
staged one of the country's biggest strikes in a decade,
postponed a wave of protests set to begin Monday after the
government offered a slightly better wage deal.

"We are going to work for two days from Monday and the strike
action is off for the moment," Thulas Nxesi, general
secretary of the South African Democratic Teachers' Union
told AFP.

"The latest government offer is 6.2 percent for this year and
for the next two years it will be inflation plus 0.4
percent," he said, after eight labour unions held talks with
the government Sunday to avert the strikes set for Monday and
Tuesday.

The unions and the government are trying to resolve a dispute
over workers' demands for a seven-percent wage increase.

The government had been offering six percent and warned there
is no more money in the coffers to bolster the salaries of
South Africa's 1.1 million public sector workers.

The unions complain that public sector employees are
underpaid with the average gross salaries of police officers,
teachers and nurses standing at around 5,000 rand (760
dollars,620 euros) per month.

The country's largest labour federation, the Congress of
South African Trade Unions (COSATU), said about 700,000
workers stayed away from work on Thursday -- one of the
biggest strikes since the end of apartheid 10 years ago.

But the government said only about 250,000 public sector
workers took part in the stayaway.

In August 1999, some 400,000 public servants took to the
streets but they failed in pushing the government into
increasing its wage offer. That was the largest strike since
the first democratic elections in 1994 which saw the African
National Congress voted into power.

- AFP
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