An essential service
08 June 2007 07:59
There is no strike more vexing than one by civil servants: doctors leave their patients, teachers their pupils and nurses put their thermometers in their pockets as they take to the picket lines.
The state stops being able to provide the most basic services to the poorest people; inevitably the middle classes do not feel the impact because they have bought out of the state sector. This year’s strike is particularly vexed, with little hope of a tactical and principled settlement in the near term. It is delaying mid-year exams and putting further pressure on stressed public hospitals. The state’s offer is tight-fisted, especially as it comes during boom times and is only inflation-based, meaning take-home pay stays the same. It is short-sighted when various data and poverty reports all point out the same problem: we have a dire shortage of teachers who can help ensure our young people are equipped with the skills needed to ensure growth.
Our hospitals are not delivering decent standards of care, not because they lack budgets, but because they lack people. So, government is duty-bound to improve its offer, especially to those at the service coalface.
However, while union strength rests on across-the-board increases, after 13 years of democracy in South Africa, it has become clear that differentiated bargaining, which takes account of skills and performance, is imperative. At the higher end of the civil service, it is vital that pay is linked to performance precisely because these men and women manage the state and so can determine the development trajectory. Midway into the dispute, positions remain polarised: government has nudged its offer up by half a percentage point, while labour, whose intransigence may have been fuelled by the political climate, is apparently set to drop its demand to 10%.
Neither move promises an immediate end to the deadlock. In this atmosphere, temperatures are flaring and incidents of violence and intimidation are reported around the country. Unionists must condemn these actions: they can only alienate the South African public, which to date has been broadly sympathetic to the workers’ demands. Most South Africans believe that a 6% wage offer, particularly for those who perform life-saving public services, is too little. They are also no doubt struck by the generous increases awarded to MPs and members of the Cabinet.
An offer of about 9% should be affordable and could be complemented by category-specific deals for scarce and special skills. This would give the state the goodwill and space to negotiate performance-based pay systems. Hardegat politics can only heighten already worrying levels of violence and intimidation and frustrate a service-starved public. Flexibility should be the order of the day.
SA must play the game The sun shines warmly on the Baltic coast this weekend, which is nice for the protesters behind a cordon of German steel, and for Angela Merkel as she tries to hammer out a deal on climate change. Not that George W Bush is basking in it — the icy blast emanating from Moscow is air-conditioning enough for him. The temptation for South Africans, meanwhile, is simply to rail against globalisation, to lament the broken promises of Gleneagles and to wear silly hats. In one sense that is fair enough. Significant debt reduction notwithstanding, the leaders of the rich world have a woeful record when it comes to the hard policy choices that will make a meaningful difference to the chances of the poor. Trade in agricultural products is the most obvious case in point. But there must be more to our response than that.
South Africa might have been edged into the shade by sexier developing countries — China, India and Brazil — but, alone among African nations, is a serious part of the conversation. We need to demand action on trade, aid and governance reform in the global system. And we need to find our own answers to the big questions about globalisation. As Finance Minister Trevor Manuel put it in a speech about globalisation and the G8: who wins, who loses and who cares? In that spirit, we should not dodge the big question of the meeting — climate change — and hope that a battle between the great powers will resolve it without requiring any real engagement from us.
The Americans are refusing to do a deal on carbon emissions until the big developing world polluters commit to a post-Kyoto deal. They are wrong to hold out on that basis, but equally it would be wrong for energy-hungry developing countries, including South Africa, to expect that they can avoid hard choices on CO2. South Africa is likely to suffer brutal effects from climate change, whether Chinese factories, American cars or our own coal-fired-power plants are to blame. We have abundant renewable energy resources and, more controversially, a fair bit of uranium.
There is no point in polluting our way to prosperity when alternatives are available, particularly if the gains are to be eaten up by the costs of a warmer world. The government is muddled and divided on this issue when clarity and innovation are needed on the diplomatic front. We can help to shame the Americans and even provide leadership to the developing world. We might even get a bit a richer in the process. It is time to become part of the game
No comments:
Post a Comment