Home | News | PSUS ACCEPT 3% COLA, SAY THEY WERE COERCED

PSUS ACCEPT 3% COLA, SAY THEY WERE COERCED

06/10/2022 08:43:00 Stanley Khumalo

Font size:

MANZINI – Public Sector Unions (PSUs) of Swaziland say they were held to ransom.

The PSUs, who represent about 21 535 civil servants, claim to have given in to the coercion exerted on them by the employer and accepted the three per cent cost-of-living adjustment (CoLA) of the monthly basic salary, which will be backdated to April 1, 2022 and also the once-off payment of one per cent of annual basic salary across the board. Unionised civil servants are a fraction of the 42 686 workers under the employ of government as per the Establishment Register for the financial year 2022/23.

Remunerated

Collectively, civil servants and politicians are remunerated through the wage Bill, which was projected to be around E7.3 billion at the end of the past financial year (March 31, 2022).
The PSUs started negotiations with the Government Negotiation Team (GNT) almost five weeks after the latter had signed a collective agreement with the Eswatini Principals Association (EPA) on June 27, 2022.

Signed

It is worth noting that while the pair signed the collective agreement, the GNT and the PSUs had reached a deadlock on the agenda, as the latter wanted CoLA to be the last item on the agenda while the former wanted it to be the first. Meanwhile, EPA represents head and deputy head teachers, who are classified as managers. When the pair signed the collective agreement, un-unionised civil servants, who include politicians, members of the security forces and civil servants in management, were awarded three per cent CoLA of the monthly basic salary, which was backdated to April 1, 2022 and also a once-off payment of one per cent of annual basic salary, across the board.

This resulted in a fraction of the 21 535 civil servants represented by the PSUs tendering resignation letters to their relevant unions, in a quest to be enrolled for the CoLA and once-off one per cent of their annual pay. It is this reason that some PSU representatives said they were coerced to seek the conclusion of this agenda item (CoLA). The PSUs are: National Public Service and Allied Workers Union (NAPSAWU), Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT), Swaziland Democratic Nurses Union (SWADNU) and Swaziland National Association of Government Accounting Personnel (SNAGAP).

Secretary General (SG) of SWADNU Mayibongwe Masangane, said the JNF was held in bad faith as government had already signed a collective agreement with EPA. Also, members of PSUs were encouraged to resign from their unions in order to qualify for the award of the CoLA and one per cent once-off of the annual salary. Masangane said: “We decoded from the GNT that they were not going to offer anything better while on the other hand, there was the encouragement to our members to resign in order to qualify for the three per cent.”

Concluded

He said with this background, they concluded that the negotiations would drag with no change in the offer while their members were suffocating from the economic challenges infused by the inflation and the impacts of the geo-politics. The SG reiterated that they were set up against their members as they were informed that they (union leaders) were refusing the offer which was signed by the un-unionised members; yet negotiations were yet to start. “Our members are desperate and the employer knew that if they were told to resign, our bargaining power stood to collapse,” he said.

Masangane said the negotiations were almost academic and signing for the offer which was extended to EPA was the only thing that they could do. He said fair negotiations would be available once the issue of EPA was dealt with. His sentiments were also shared by the SG of SNAGAP, Phumzile Masilela. She said they signed for the offer extended by the GNT due to the fact that their members were resigning. “They gave EPA and un-unionised civil servants the CoLA and our members were threatening us with resignations. In essence, this divided our workers,” she said.

It is worth noting that the Minister of Public Service, Mabulala Maseko, when announcing the collective agreement between the GNT and EPA, said government was conscious of the erosion of the buying power of salaries for civil servants and was also in full appreciation of the prevailing fiscal and cash flow challenges, which was why the employer invited both the PSUs (NAPSAWU, SNAT, SNA and SNAGAP) and EPA at the beginning of the 2022/2023 financial year, to present their proposed agenda items that would culminate in a consolidated agenda for the current financial year. In fact, the minister said CoLA had an amount of E220 million set aside through the Appropriations Act No. 1 of 2023. Maseko also said government set aside E55 million for the 2016 Salary Review Appeals and E15 million for the engagement of a consultant to undertake a salary review of the entire public service.