Negotiations around wage talks are currently underway between the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and government as workers look to get increases come May 2025.
These talks come as a two-year 3% wage agreement comes to an end in April 2025.
Cosatu convener Khaya Sodidi said that the union is demanding double-digit salary increases for government employees.
Earlier this week, Sodidi told the SABC that unions are looking at what they received in the past 4 years.
“We’ve taken that work and research work that we’ve done, we’ve taken it down to our members to give us a mandate, an informed mandate which is backed up by the economic information we’ve done,” he added.
“But just to say, we are looking at a double-digit increase in salaries of employees. Because what we’ve discovered is that in the public sector, for the past 4 years, the state of government employees, they’ve been receiving far less (than) the inflation,” Sodidi said.
Yesterday, Sodidi told Newzroom Africa that they are not done with consultations with the various other unions but he did emphasise that it looks very likely that most if not all of the unions are demanding a double-digit salary increase.
The previous public sector wage agreement involved cash allowances that translated into a pensionable salary, plus an increase of 3.3% in 2023/2024 and 4.7% in 2024/2025.
Reason for double digit increase
The union head said that a number of studies have shown that government employees have really not been receiving real increases.
He emphasised that previous wage increases do not keep up with inflation, increasing food prices, petrol, and other expenses.
Sodidi said the wage increase government workers get is below the increases other State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) workers get such as Eskom, South African Revenue Service (SARS) and the South African Local Government Association (SALGA).
He said that for the last four years government employees wage increases have been under inflation.
The union head specifically noted Eskom and said that their employees received a 7% wage increase over the last four years.
Sodidi emphasised that Cosatu wants to see the same treatment with their workers.
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