Public sector trade unions intend to propose a 10% public salary increment for the financial year 2021/2022 to government in recognition of the high cost of living.
A union source has indicated that although the Public Service Bargaining Council (PSBC) still remains dysfunctional, it has been agreed in principle by selected unions to demand 10% salary increase across board in order to cushion public sector employees.
“We are only waiting for government to erect the PSBC so that negotiations can start, union members are in demand for increment because the cost of living has gone up. Union members are in demand for a hike because taxes have gone up, food prices have also increased, so you can imagine the pressure now,” said the source.
In 2019, government indicated that for financial year 2019/20 there be an increment of 10% for scales A & B ,6 % for scales C & D effective 1st April 2019 while for financial year 2020/21, there be an increment of 10 % for scales A & B and 6 % for scales C & D effective 1st April 2020.
Meanwhile, Union Federation BOFEPUSU President Johannes Tshukudu said although there is need for salary hike in the public service, no agreement has been made to determine the percentage.
He said they have requested government to withdraw some of the top officials from the PSBC as that amounts to conflict of interest.
“We decided to withdraw from the PSBC long time ago because there were Permanent Secretaries involved when we should be in negotiations with the DPSM”
“We cannot allow Permanent Secretaries to sit at the bargaining council when they have Ministries to deal with, government has a huge staff compliment,” said Tshukudu.
He also said they have since agreed as negotiating parties to have an independent facilitator to bring all parties to the table.
“The 6 public sector unions being BOFEPUSU family and BOPEU agree that the threshold must be reduced from the initial one to allow all major trade unions to independently get chance to participate in the bargaining council. One can ask, what then happens to the minority trade unions, in that case the minority trade unions will then get a chance partner with major trade unions but now the issue is that these minority trade unions want an independent affiliation in the bargaining council but that can never happen although that viewpoint is supported by DPSM and government,” added Tshukudu.
He said negotiations are currently stuck as they had proposed that the two minor unions being the Botswana Government Workers Union and Botswana Workers Allied Union be taken under the wing of majority unions since they are unable to meet the threshold in terms of numbers to sit at the bargaining table but the two unions feel otherwise.
He also said government is hellbent in macro-managing the PSBC as that is evidenced by their support for the minority unions.
He further highlighted that it has proven over the years that government enjoys the bickering of unions, saying that in the lead up to the last negotiations, government decided to negotiate with minority unions outside the negotiation structure that was set up at the time.