Public service job cuts: Unions threaten to hurt ANC at next year’s elections

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU) has threatened to revoke its vote for the African National Congress (ANC) at next year’s general elections.

This comes after yet another announcement regarding the downscaling of the public service sector, as a means to free up funds in the national budget.

South Africa’s Deputy President, David Mabuza, admitted, on Thursday, that the government was looking to trim its workforce as part of a national reconfiguration prerogative, first mentioned by President Cyril Ramaphosa during his State of the Nation address in February.

Contradictions getting the ANC in trouble

Since the President’s initial announcement, the practical mechanisms of administrative change have been discussed at ANC conferences and party lekgotlas. Earlier in the month, a senior executive within the ruling party mentioned that the government was planning to sack 30 000 employees over the course of five years, thereby freeing up R20 billion.

Major Trade Unions got wind of this planned retrenchment process and fired back at the party. To ease tensions, the Minister of Public Service and Administration, Ayanda Dlodlo, rubbished reports concerning government retrenchments, labelling them as libellous.

But why would Deputy President Mabuza contradict fellow party member Dlodlo, and concede that public service job cuts are inevitable? Nobody quite knows the answer.

Unions put the ANC between a rock and a hard place

And for the unions, whether it’s a result of miscommunication or something more sinister, makes little difference. NEHAWU has again hit back at the ANC over the proposed job cuts; this time, though, will little regard for subtleties.

Business Tech reported on the statement made by the trade union, in which the organisation voiced its disapproval of being betrayed by earlier assurances made by Dlodlo, saying:

“When the media ran a story about government’s plan to shed jobs the national union warned government about such a detrimental move and vowed to fire with fire. The Department of Public Service and Administration [DPSA] quickly issued a statement to allay our fears and dispelled the notion of the impending job losses.”

Despite the general consensus pointing towards a bloated civil service in need of immediate trimming, NEHAWU argued that the sector was, in fact, understaffed, saying:

“We are, however, infuriated by the confirmation by the Deputy President that the public service will be scaled down as part of austerity measures. As things stand, the public service is already heavily understaffed because of austerity measures introduced by National Treasury.

We vehemently rejected the tired, widely held, but false belief that the public service is bloated. Currently we have about 1.3 million public servants servicing a population of 52 million people. The lack of adequate personnel in the public service has resulted in service delivery being adversely affected especially in health and education.”

Unions threaten to boycott next year’s general elections

NEHAWU ended its statement with a threatening call-to-arms, which would see allied unions joining the fight at next year’s general elections:

“Working with other Cosatu public sector unions we will seek a meeting with government to sharply raise these issues. We also call on society at large to join our fight to save jobs.

Once again, we want to put it unequivocally clear that we will find it very difficult to support the ANC in next year General Elections if it continues to fold its arms while job losses continue unabated.”