An 11th-hour bid by the SA Revenue Service (Sars) to avoid a labour strike – affecting the tax authority for the first time in 10 years – has failed, after the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) and the Public Servants’ Association (PSA) dug in their heels about an across-the-board salary increase.
Sars said it had “reached a deadlock in negotiations with the recognised trade unions over salary increases and improvements in conditions of service and benefits for bargaining unit employees”.
It added that the negotiations had been ongoing since November last year, and despite union representatives having referred the dispute to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration in February, “parties continued with negotiations in an attempt to resolve the impasse”.
Sars said that as part of its last-ditch attempts to avoid a strike, it had “tabled a differentiated salary increase for employees in the bargaining unit that finds it basis in principles of addressing salary anomalies, and reducing the ever-widening salary gaps caused by across-the-board increases.”
It added that “this model could see top-performing Sars employees who are paid at the lower end receiving increases of up to 9.2% (CPI plus 5.1%). In this model no employee would receive an increase of less than 5.2% (CPI plus 1.1%).”
Unfortunately, said Sars, Nehawu and the PSA had insisted on an 11.4% increase for all its members.
Meanwhile, jitters are reverberating through the freight industry at the prospect of customs and excise services shutting down.
