Striking ‘the only weapon we have’
Lucas Shimanga is used to handling a lot of money. However, the money is not his. He works in the Finance Department of Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital and his job entails paying for services rendered to the hospital. Today, he is fighting for his own money. He is one of more than a million government workers of various categories who have downed tools to force government’s hand to give them more money for salaries and housing allowances. Since April, talks between public sector unions and government, represented by the Department of Public Service and Administration, have failed to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
‘We are demonstrating for the money that the government’s supposed to be giving us. If you can remember, we were looking for 11%. They couldn’t afford it. We went down until 8.6%. Housing, we were at R2000. 00 at one stage, then we went to R1625. 00. Today we are at R1000. 00’, Shimanga says.
The government is offering a 7% increase and a monthly housing allowance of R700. 00. Government is adamant that this is all it can afford and it is its final offer. Thanks to the recession, the South African Revenue Service has collected R60 billion less money than the previous year and money is tight. Government says it will implement its offer this month if public sector unions do not accept it. The unions have also dug in their heels, saying they will go on an indefinite strike if the Department of Public Service and Administration does not revise its offer.
‘If we don’t agree on a particular thing and they bull-doze it down our throat, it’s sad. We are not going to do anything else, but embark on the industrial strike because that’s what we are best at. That’s the only tool the Constitution allows us. The only weapon we have is to demonstrate, as the strike is within our Constitution. This is the only weapon we have, nothing else’, he says.
Shimanga has worked at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital since 1995. He earns so little that he’s even ashamed to tell when I ask him.
‘Hey, Chief! It’s a disgrace’, he says. ‘What I can tell you is, what I earn’¦ I think it’s less than someone’s car allowance. For me to afford a house’¦ the very same demands that we are demanding today, it will take 4 ‘ 6 demands. Maybe by then I will qualify for a house’, he says.
‘I’m renting a back room. These back rooms start from R500. 00. If you are earning R3500 and the owner says, ‘to stay here, I want R800. 00 a month’’¦ at the end of the day you still need to eat, so it becomes problematic.
The hospital employees’¦ you can even ask any bank’¦ they can tell you that those people’¦ each and every time we visit a bank we want a loan’¦ again we are having a problem to pay it. You have to buy school clothes, you have to make sure the child has transport to go to school. It becomes difficult. It becomes a challenge’, Shimanga continues.
He and fellow government employees have rejected the Department of Public Service and Administration’s offer, which the department has vowed to implement.
‘At the end of the day they implement it, they tax it, I’m still back at zero. Other weeks I won’t have money to be able go to work, then they’ll mark me absent and absent. If you didn’t come to work they take more money than when you are present. Others don’t afford to come to work on a daily basis and their money is being chowed. At the end of the day you take home R800. 00 and you owe the back room owner R800. 00. If you don’t give that R800. 00 to that one, he kicks you out. It’s a pity. It’s sad! It’s an embarrassment to work for government in this country’, he says.
When the strike began on Wednesday, only NEHAWU (the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union and SADTU (the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union demonstrated. The Public Service Association (PSA) and the Hospital and Other Service Personnel Trade Union of South Africa (HOSPERSA) joined yesterday.
Each day they participate in the strike workers lose a day’s pay. The health and lives of patients are also at risk.
‘They can go, it’s fine. Let them go. But we are not going to work. We are withdrawing our manpower. We are withdrawing what is constitutionally ours. They can come and go. It’s fine. But at the end of the day they should accept that there is a possibility that they will find no one in there’, says Shimanga.
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