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South Africa will have to wait the weekend to find out if public servants start their fourth week of strikes on Monday or accept the government's latest wage offer.
Union leaders on Friday said they would explain the finer points of the government's revised pay offer to striking workers over the weekend. Their members' initial rejection of the offer may have been based on incomplete information, the National Education Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu) said.
Unions were hoping to have an answer for the government on Monday.
"We only gave ourselves one day to consult our members. They rejected it initially, but now we are saying why don't we give ourselves more time," National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu) spokesman Sizwe Pamla said. "It is more about 'have we done justice to consultation?' The situation is: if members say 'go back to the street', we will go back to the street. But we don't want them to come back and say 'you never told us about the package'."
The 17-day strike has crippled service delivery, state hospitals, disrupted schooling ahead of matric exams and been marred by violence in parts of the country.
Unions believe the initial rejection of the government's latest offer was based on media reports which focused exclusively on the 7.5 percent pay hike and R800 a month housing allowance, against their basic demands of an 8.6 percent increase and a R1000 housing allowance.
Agreements to discuss medical contributions and the implementation of the minimum service level requirements were among the other points, but these were not widely reported, Pamla said.
Public Service Minister Richard Baloyi, who has said the government's latest offer would already force it to borrow money, told SABC radio it had no room to manoeuvre.
