Staff from the 'National Health Laboratory Service' whent on strike at the premises over a wage dispute issues. Picture: Antoine de Ras, 11 Aug 2016 Staff from the 'National Health Laboratory Service' whent on strike at the premises over a wage dispute issues. Picture: Antoine de Ras, 11 Aug 2016
Johannesburg - “This is the new Marikana!” one National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) worker shouted over the noise of a chanting crowd.
He and hundreds of workers at the Sandringham, Joburg, branch and many more countrywide downed tools yesterday morning to embark on a nationwide illegal strike after a deadlock in wage negotiations between the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) and the NHLS management.
The NHLS is the largest diagnostic pathology service in South Africa, with the responsibility of supporting the national and provincial health departments in the delivery of healthcare. It also diagnoses and screens urgent patient tests for HIV, Ebola, multi-drug-resistant TB and cancer, among others.
The Sandringham branch was under heavy security – from the gate through to areas where the workers picketed.
According to the service, 564 out of 1 718 workers in Gauteng participated in the strike, despite a court interdict making it illegal.
“We have been in talks with management since February. Talks started dragging on after the CCMA extended conciliation on July 2 (after an official dispute was declared in June) and the fundamental issues are the market-related pay scales,” Nehawu shop steward Benjamin Mogoye said.
In 2011, Nehawu and the NHLS had a benchmarking exercise to find out how workers were being paid in relation to other public service workers.
“The outcome of that was that the NHLS workers are highly underpaid by something like 60 percent compared to public service workers. In some of the worst-case scenarios, NHLS workers were paid 338 percent below the pay rate,” Mogoye pointed out.
The NHLS board then approved new pay scales which were according to the market pay rate, to be implemented in April this year. But on that deadline, the service’s management said they would implement the new pay scales over a three-year period.
On other points of dispute, on which the service said in a statement they had reached consensus with Nehawu – were medical aid subsidies.
“Public service workers were offered R2 850, whereas the NHLS workers were offered R2 033, but we wanted to be on the public workers’ scale. To be reasonable, we moved down during talks to wanting R2 400 while the employer is moving to R2 165,” Mogoye said.
In terms of the housing subsidy (living allowance), according to Mogoye, public service workers get R1 200 while NHLS workers get R923. Workers have asked for a R60 increment.
“Across the board, management has offered a 6.5 percent increase, which is still subject to negotiation,” he added.
But the NHLS said the increase, as well as the medical aid cap, living allowance, single-term agreement and increase in the shift allowance had all been agreed to.
“The demand that has brought on the strike from labour is that they are demanding the immediate implementation of a revised reward and remuneration philosophy that the NHLS started establishing in June 2013…
“The strategy has been approved by the board, but due to affordability, implementation was approved over a five-year period,” Begum Beerwinkel from the office of the chief executive said in a statement.
“The NHLS is anticipating being in a position to commence with the implementation to the first phase of this project towards the latter part of this year,” he added.
The NHLS said there were still prerequisites to be met prior to implementation of the strategy. However, they had given the opportunity to union members to elect to have the agreed salary increase on the August payroll.
The workers and union leaders said they were not going back to work until their demands had been met.
Asked whether they cared if their strike adversely affected patients’ diagnostic tests across the country, Mogoye said: “We know the work we do is urgent… we care about our people, but it’s the employer and not us who is unwilling to compromise.”
The NHLS said most of the striking workers had returned to work around lunchtime.
Contingency plans were put in place to ensure the strike did not effect diagnostic work by referring specimens to the other labs, increased courier services, and emergency samples being prioritised.
THE STAR
