* Costs mount quickly in state wage bill
* Deficit projections at risk
* Ruling ANC wants to avoid an embarrassing strike
By Jon Herskovitz
JOHANNESBURG, Feb 24 (Reuters) – The South African
government’s plan to keep a lid on spending in the budget
outlined this week will face a big test in the coming months
when government workers finalise new wage deals.
The unions, representing 1.3 million workers, are at
loggerheads with the government. Any deal above the five to six
percent that has been set aside would add billions of dollars to
expenditures and jeopardise the deficit projection of 4.6
percent of gross domestic product in the 2012/13 state budget.
The unions, which staged a three-week strike in 2010 that
slowed Africa’s largest economy, are looking for a 10 percent
wage increase and a doubling of the housing allowance to 1,650
rand ($220) a month.
The government has offered a five percent increase and no
more for housing they said.
“If nothing changes, we cannot rule out labour conflict,”
the spokesman of the NEHAWU, health workers union, Sizwe Pamla,
told Reuters. Government officials were not immediately
available for comment.
Continued…
