The government has just been freed from taking a huge sum of money it doesn’t have to give to people who don’t deserve it. The highest court, upholding an earlier decision by the Labor Appeal Court, has thrown a life jacket to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government. A supposedly cramped treasury, which handed out a windfall of R200 billion in tax revenue just a week ago, has been exempted from having to implement the last part of the three-year public service wage agreement, which would have cost R29 billion. The unanimous, full Constitutional Court ruling slammed civil servants’ unions for greed and…
The government has just been freed from taking a huge sum of money it doesn’t have to give to people who don’t deserve it.
The highest court, upholding an earlier decision by the Labor Appeal Court, has thrown a life jacket to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government. A supposedly cramped treasury, which handed out a windfall of R200 billion in tax revenue just a week ago, has been exempted from having to implement the last part of the three-year public service wage agreement, which would have cost R29 billion.
The unanimous, full Constitutional Court ruling sues public service unions for greed and “unjust enrichment” of themselves during two years of “illegal raises”.
Acting Judge Mjabuliseni Madondo said the collective agreement, if implemented, would “cause a fiscal crisis” that would impair the state’s ability to alleviate the plight of the “poorest of the poor”.
The crux of the problem, Madondo said, was the regulation stipulating that the government could only enter into an agreement if there was a “realistic calculation” of costs in both the current and next fiscal year and also provided it was not was contrary to the rules of the Ministry of Finance. †
“The state argues that these mandatory requirements were not met before entering into the disputed collective agreement, and it is therefore illegal,” Madondo said.
In other words, the government wanted the courts to void the agreement on the grounds that it had not given proper thought to what it was doing. It is an astonishing admission of the incompetence of the ministers who negotiated the deal and of the cabinet that approved it.
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The second part of the state’s argument was that even if the deal was in line with Treasury regulations, it would become unaffordable because of Covid. The government has not been plunged into financial trouble by Covid.
While it’s true that Covid added extra pressure, the much worse impact was the ANC’s skewed priorities, vanity projects, lack of fiscal discipline and failure to govern in corruption.
The fallacy of the state’s Covid argument is further exposed by the massive infusions of cash that the government has been given as a direct result of the pandemic. The Solidarity Fund raised R3.4 billion and another R182 billion from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
While the ConCourt has been indulgent, but misguided, in saving the government of Ramaphosa from its own folly, it has not spared a spoiled civil service from scathing contempt.
During dire and deteriorating economic conditions, public service workers had “secured their jobs and received year-over-year salary increases … which outperformed inflation and outperformed private sector salary increases,” Madondo said.
The subtext of the ConCourt ruling is that the 1.3 million civil servant unions are overpaid brats. A stern judicial reprimand will not change that. Only a government willing to undertake fundamental reforms could do that. A Ramaphosa who has to hold a leadership conference in nine months can’t and won’t.
An ANC facing a general election in two years’ time cannot and will not.