Todays Times.
Labor Unrest Empties South African Hospitals
DURBAN, South Africa — Most patients in the hulking, seven-story tuberculosis hospital here — all infected with potentially lethal, drug-resistant strains of the disease — have gone home since the majority of nurses, orderlies and janitors went on strike a week and a half ago.
Dr. Ruben Naidu, the hospital’s chief executive, noted regretfully that the patients being released prematurely were highly contagious. “Out in the community,” he said, “they’re going to spread the disease.”
The missing workers are a small part of a sprawling, nationwide strike by hundreds of thousands
of public employees that has paralyzed hospitals and schools across South Africa, undercutting major drives to combat AIDS and TB and to repair a deeply troubled education system.
At the tuberculosis hospital here, known as King George V, strikers brandishing whips and
sticks chased doctors and nurses off their wards. Some workers, fearing for their lives, hid in
locked offices. Services have not recovered.
***************************
And the strike seems to be intensifying. The Congress of South African Trade Unions, or Cosatu,
the powerful federation that is part of the governing alliance led by the African National Congress, threatened secondary strikes of manufacturing and mining workers next week if union demands were not met.
South Africa’s trade union movement has a storied history in the struggle against apartheid,
but this season of labor unrest has heightened a deep worry here that the country’s proud spirit of ubuntu — a generous human interconnectedness that flared during the World Cup — has taken a back seat to materialism.
****************************
Public employees have gotten a series of annual pay increases that have led to a near doubling of
government spending on wages in the past five years. This year, they are demanding an 8.6 per-
cent increase, more than double the 3.7 percent rate of inflation.
But the government has offered 7 percent. The workers also want a doubling of their monthly housing allowance to $137.
No one here maintains that public workers are lavishly paid. Their salaries are modest by first world standards. The union says their members’ earnings need to growto reduce the country’s income inequality, which, by some estimates, is the worst in the world.
But economists say that the rising public wage bill — particularly with no agreement from unions
that, for example, chronically absent teachers could be fired more easily — is squeezing out spending on textbooks, hospitals and roads, with no assurances that the quality of public services will improve.
In a nation where more than a third of the potential work force is jobless and more than a million of its 50 million citizens have joined the ranks of the out-of-work since just last year, rising pay for public employees also reduces the government’s room to hire more people, officials say.
Dr. Ruben Naidu, the hospital’s chief executive, noted regretfully that the patients being released prematurely were highly contagious. “Out in the community,” he said, “they’re going to spread the disease.”
The missing workers are a small part of a sprawling, nationwide strike by hundreds of thousands
of public employees that has paralyzed hospitals and schools across South Africa, undercutting major drives to combat AIDS and TB and to repair a deeply troubled education system.
At the tuberculosis hospital here, known as King George V, strikers brandishing whips and
sticks chased doctors and nurses off their wards. Some workers, fearing for their lives, hid in
locked offices. Services have not recovered.
***************************
And the strike seems to be intensifying. The Congress of South African Trade Unions, or Cosatu,
the powerful federation that is part of the governing alliance led by the African National Congress, threatened secondary strikes of manufacturing and mining workers next week if union demands were not met.
South Africa’s trade union movement has a storied history in the struggle against apartheid,
but this season of labor unrest has heightened a deep worry here that the country’s proud spirit of ubuntu — a generous human interconnectedness that flared during the World Cup — has taken a back seat to materialism.
****************************
Public employees have gotten a series of annual pay increases that have led to a near doubling of
government spending on wages in the past five years. This year, they are demanding an 8.6 per-
cent increase, more than double the 3.7 percent rate of inflation.
But the government has offered 7 percent. The workers also want a doubling of their monthly housing allowance to $137.
No one here maintains that public workers are lavishly paid. Their salaries are modest by first world standards. The union says their members’ earnings need to growto reduce the country’s income inequality, which, by some estimates, is the worst in the world.
But economists say that the rising public wage bill — particularly with no agreement from unions
that, for example, chronically absent teachers could be fired more easily — is squeezing out spending on textbooks, hospitals and roads, with no assurances that the quality of public services will improve.
In a nation where more than a third of the potential work force is jobless and more than a million of its 50 million citizens have joined the ranks of the out-of-work since just last year, rising pay for public employees also reduces the government’s room to hire more people, officials say.
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