Teachers abandon the moral high ground

Whichever way you look at it, in the teachers' strike starting today, the only real losers are South Africa’s millions of learners whose education has already suffered due to an ill-conceived outcomes-based education experiment and an extended winter holiday. Now, teachers have abandoned whatever moral high ground they might have held thanks to the deliberately calculated threat to Matric exams by some trade union leaders; while education departments seem to be completely out of touch with, or naïve about, conditions on the ground with their advice to pupils.

Allen Thompson, deputy president of the National Teachers Union (Natu), was last week reported as saying “there will no Matric exams written this year in South Africa. We have decided to use the Matric exams as a lever if the government does not come forward with a better offer.”

Some schools included propagandistic letters from trade unions in notices sent to parents and guardians on Friday, informing them about the strike and leaving it up to them to decide if they want to send their children to school today. Others schools encouraged pupils to stay at home.

Judged against the background of Thompson’s threat, it strikes as cynical that some of the trade unions in their contribution to these notices claim that they refrained from using the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup as a lever in their negotiations with the government. These claims are also made apparently without any sense of irony that teachers, unlike other workers, could follow the World Cup at their leisure, courtesy of an extended winter school holiday.

Pupils and their parents and guardians were yesterday instructed by the national and provincial Education departments that they should attend school today, even if there was no supervision available. They were expected to keep themselves occupied with all sorts of self-teaching activities, including completing newspaper crossword puzzles.

Safety concerns

In light of regular reports about discipline problems at many schools, the approach by the Education departments has left many parents uneasy and even concerned for the safety and well-being of their children.

There was further cause for concern that things may turn ugly at some schools with the National Professional Teacher’s Organisation of South Africa’s (Naptosa’s) president Ezrah Ramasehla urging his members to consider various options, including sit-ins and pickets at school. Such action ran the risk of confrontation between parents - many of whom are unemployed or find it difficult to make ends meet themselves - and teachers.

In an apparent acknowledgement of the dangers involved, it was reported that among others the police would be on standby.

The strike comes at a most inopportune time - at the end of a long weekend, barely three weeks after the extended World Cup holiday, when schools are not fully back in rhythm and little more than two months before Matrics have to begin their all-important final exam.

Syncronising negotiations and budget

The present unsavoury situation of the teachers' strike, being but a part of wider public service labour action, graphically illustrates the problems presented by the fact that the negotiation process and the government’s budgeting processes are completely out of kilter with one another. At least on that front there may be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

Announcing the government’s “final” salary offer on Thursday last week, Public Service and Administration Minister Richard Baloyi said it would provide "a bridge" to a more far-reaching negotiation process that would be synchronised with the State's Budget cycle.

The latest  would cost more than the R23 billion that had been budgeted for salary increases for the period, but Baloyi refused to be drawn on the new cost, saying only that the government would need to reprioritise other expenditure.

He said there was a need to bring the present negotiations to an urgent close, as it would be necessary to open the next round before November if there were to be any chance of aligning the bargaining processes with the finalisation of the Budget for 2011/12.

Baloyi committed to a range of historical challenges being addressed during this next round, including:

• A review of government remuneration policy;
• The synchronisation of salary negotiations with the Budget cycle;
• A return to April as the implementation month for salary adjustments;
• The building of sustainable negotiation capacity;
• The introduction of a multi-term focus in salary negotiations; and
• Further dialogue on housing support for public servants.

"We are willing to address the outstanding issues, including housing, in the second phase," he said during a briefing at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.