The Secretary General of the Botswana Federation of Public Sector Unions (BOFEPUSU), Andrew Motsamai, has indicated that they are expecting about 90 thousand, out of 103 thousand Civil Servants, to join together in an industrial action.
The strike, which is billed as the biggest ever in the country’s history, is expected to be staged on the 18th April.
The decision by BOFEPUSU, which represents five workers’ unions in Botswana, namely NALCGPWU, BTU, BBOSETU and BOPEU, to go on strike follows protracted negotiations on salary increase between the workers’ unions and the Department of Public Service Management (DPSM) as their employer.
The Unions are demanding a 16 percent salary hike “but the employer is not shifting from her zero percent offer”.
“This is between BOFEPUSU and DPSM as per trade dispute Act is over” said Motsamai.
The five Unions met with the DPSM under the facilitation of labour on the 25th March 2011.
Addressing a press conference at the launch of the countdown to the strike, dubbed “18 days to the BOFEPUSU Industrial Action, fight for the restoration of the Workers restoration power,” Motsamai said, “The failure to settle Dispute Certificate permits Workers to serve the employer with an industrial action notice of 48 hours upon elapse of the 30 days mediation period on the 12th April 2011 as per Mandate obtained from the Workers.”
Motsamai said they are being pushed into this strike that what they demand is fairness over the distribution of the county’s wealth.
He stated that they, as workers, pressurized Government to borrow for this course as they believe the current budget can deal with this matter.