daniel chigunwe
If unions accept the government’s latest pay deal, nurses, cleaners and porters at state hospitals will have less money to take home than last year — as was the case for the 2022 and 2020 financial years, according to our analysis of data from the department of public services and administration.
In the state’s final offer these workers will get a 3,3 percent increase compared with what their salaries were in the 2022/23 financial year (which ends on March 31), says Oomang Parag, the spokesperson for the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council.
Inflation was 7 percent in February, according to Statistics South Africa.
Public servants have also been getting a R1 000 cash allowance (after tax) from the government since 2021. Until now, this cash payment wasn’t added to the figure that the state uses when it calculates how much to pay into people’s pension funds (which is usually 13 percent of someone’s “pensionable” salary, on top of the 7,5 percent that workers contribute each month themselves).
But the new deal says that from April 1, this amount will be part of the math, which will translate into a bigger pension contribution from the state.
It will also create a higher starting point for future negotiations, says the public services department.
On average, the cash payout represents 4.2 percent of public servants’ salaries. Since that’s now being added to the 3.3 percent increase to their baseline salary, the government says workers are getting a pay increase of 7.5 percent in total.
Is this what the “death strike” was about?
The negotiations about the pay in the next financial year (1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024) are unfolding against a tense backdrop.
In March, members of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) led a strike over the salaries for the current financial year, which ends on March 31.
They wanted a 10 percent salary hike for 2022/23, but the government offered just 3 percent.
The strike cost four people their lives according to the government, but the chaos didn’t result in a salary bump. Strikers’ pay will also be docked for every day they weren’t at work between March 6 and 17 under a “no work, no pay” agreement between the government and unions.
In the end, even the promise that ended the strike (that the state would keep talking to Nehawu about its demands) fell through, according to the union’s spokesperson Lwazi Nkolonzi.
He says:
The government has reneged on the settlement agreement of the strike about 2022/23 pay.
Why was the state hesitant to agree to salary hikes?
South Africa just can’t afford the pay unions want.
The government is working to rein in its massive public sector wage bill.
In relation to the size of its economy, South Africa spends more on paying public sector workers than most other countries. In 2021, the combined cost of government worker salaries was equal to 14.8 percent of the value of all the goods and services that were produced in the country in that year (called the gross domestic product, or GDP).
Other middle-income countries such as Mexico, India and Russia had a public sector wage bill of less than 10 percent of GDP.
So what do nurses, porters and cleaners earn at South Africa’s state hospitals? We look at the government’s salary data to see how their pay has changed over the years.
Nurses earn between R18 300 and R93 100 a month — plus a R1 000 stipend
Among full-time professional nurses working at government hospitals, those doing their year of community service are paid the least.
Professional nurses study for four years and then have to do a year’s compulsory community service after graduating. There are also three other categories of nurses that work at government hospitals and clinics: specialist nurses, staff nurses and nursing assistants.
Specialist nurses are professional nurses who have a postgraduate degree in a particular specialty, such as cancer treatment or psychiatric care. Staff nurses and nursing assistants work under the supervision of a professional nurse.
Staff nurses are qualified to do more complicated tasks than nursing assistants. They can treat fractures, for instance, something nursing assistants aren’t allowed to do.
At the moment, the government pays professional nurses doing community service R220 347 a year (which works out to R18 362,25 a month), according to data from the department of public services and administration, and nursing managers at tertiary hospitals, the best paid position, R1 117 236 a year (which is R93 103 a month).
According to Moses Mushi, the spokesperson for the department of public services and administration, this figure includes benefits like medical aid and housing, so the basic salary they take home is less than this.
However, all workers also get a stipend of R1 000 per month (after tax), which is not included in the annual salary figures according to Mushi.
Salary ranges for staff nurses and nursing assistants are lower. A staff nurse, who studies towards a two-year diploma, will get between R179 172 and R311 361 a year from the government, while a nursing assistant, who has a one-year qualification, will get between R138 549 and R240 777. Once again, these workers also get the R1 000 monthly allowance.
Although there is a wide gulf between the salaries of different categories of nurses, what’s common to them is that when accounting for inflation, these workers will have earned less than the previous year for two out of the last three financial years. That will become three out of four if unions accept government’s current offer. – Fin24.
Bongani Ndlovu