Leaders of the ongoing national public servants strike have told strikers in Grahamstown to apply “minimum force” to persuade their colleagues who are at work to join the strike.
Leaders of the ongoing national public servants strike have told strikers in Grahamstown to apply “minimum force” to persuade their colleagues who are at work to join the strike.
Addressing more than 200 striking workers at the Albany Museum on Wednesday, Clement Marula, one of the negotiators in the national Public Service Council Bargaining Chamber, told the strikers that they should remind their working colleagues to go on strike as they will also benefit if the government meets the strikers’ demands.
“It is these free riders who are taking our struggle backwards,” he explained. “The non-participation of our members in this region is worrying.”
He encouraged the strikers to go to the hospital, Home Affairs and the Albany Museum and “remind” their working colleagues that they should also go on strike so that there could be a “complete shutdown of government services”.
He emphasised: “Do not intimidate them, just remind them.” He warned the police to refrain from “provoking the workers in our picket lines” and encouraged station commissioners to thoroughly read the court interdict which was obtained by the government against the strikers.
He applauded the South African Police Union and the Police and Prison Civil Rights Union for pledging their solidarity with the strike.
He added that maximising strike participation by government workers will ensure that the strike is short-lived as its impact would be immediately felt by the government.
He again blamed the protracted strike on non-participating workers saying that their lack of action lessens the strike’s impact.
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) deputy chairperson in Makana Thanda Mtshalala encouraged the strikers to “pinch” their working counterparts and remind them that they should be on strike.
This statement was met with cheers of approval by the crowd. Marula dismissed the “lie that the current offer tabled by the government is 9%” and said that their demands of an 8.6% wage increase and R1 000 housing subsidy are reasonable.
“We want to have a permanent solution to ensure that all 1.3 million public servants have houses,” he said adding that the government housing allowance is not a permanent solution.
He said they are demanding that the implementation of the proposed increases should be backdated to 1 April.
Earlier strikers picketed at Settlers Hospital during lunchtime but were locked out of wards where nurses and doctors were seeing patients.
Hi-Tec security guards controlled access to the hospital at all the entrances. Meanwhile, local public schools have closed as most of them are locked due to the teachers strike.
Yesterday, in an attempt towards a complete shutdown, scores of minibuses carrying Cosatu-aligned public servants left Grahamstown for Bhisho to take part in a provincial march to table their demands at the government’s provincial headquarters.
