SA Revenue Service (SARS) employees have embarked on their full-blown nationwide strike, after they rejected the revised offer of 1.39% proposed by the SARS Commissioner, aggravated employees took to the streets to raise their concerns.
The march is spearheaded by National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu), where the allied workers are demanding a salary increase.
The union’s mother body, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has also weighed in its support for the protected strike, and called for all members to shutdown all SARS service centres across the country to show solidarity.
On Friday last week, Nehawu convened a national meeting, to solicit views and pave a way forward on the wage negotiations after the union had rejected the revised offer that was tabled by SARS previously.
The union embarked on a strike two months ago in May, after both parties, the union and the management at SARS failed to break a deadlock and this led to the collapse of negotiations.
“The intransigent Commissioner of SARS decided to mislead workers by paying them the performance bonuses that were due to them as if it was a new offer of the employer
“SARS remained at their initial offer of 1.39% despite the fact that worker surpassed the projected revenue that was to be collected for the period 2021/2022,” says the union’s secretary Zola Saphetha.
“As Nehawu, we have tried to engage the institution since May 2022 and they remained stubborn with the 1.39% that is way below the inflation rate of 5.9 percent currently,” Saphetha added further.
Saphetha said SARS rejected the tabled demands for salaries be adjusted using October 2021 CPI of 5% + 7%, across the board for employees within the Bargaining Unit.
“They further rejected a single term agreement and implementation date of April 01st, on medical aid and housing allowance, full and equal medical aid and housing allowance for all employees.
“An introduction of pandemic leave of 10 working days per annum,” said Saphetha.
He added that in June, the union called for another meeting with the management, however the convened meeting did not yield any positive results.
“Instead, SARS made it categorically clear that the position tabled to Nehawu on the 29th May 2022, has not changed and remains final.
“The national union has since then been consulting its members through convening membership meetings, shopsteward councils in all workplaces of SARS which culminated to the national meeting held on Friday 08th July 2022 for a mandate on the way forward,” detailed Saphetha.
The union said SARS left them with no option, but to mobilise their mass power and take the battle to the streets.
“This is the only power that we have as workers in fighting unfair conditions of work, we have been negotiating in good faith and with much patience SARS has stalled and negotiated in bad faith,” Saphetha addressed.
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