Public Service strike looms in South Africa

With negotiations over pay and conditions stalled, South Africa’s public sector unions have begun balloting members on industrial action.

Negotiations for a new deal for the nation’s 1.3 million Public Servants broke down on 12 August. An all-out strike would shut public amenities such as hospitals, schools and police stations. 

Unions have amended their demand for a 10 per cent increase down to 6.5 per cent. However, the Government rejected this as unaffordable.

In its initial response, the Government tabled a 1.5 per cent increase, which is ordinarily awarded to Public Servants for their years of service and is factored in every year. As a sweetener, it added an after-tax cash gratuity (or bonus) of R1,000 ($A85.21) a month.

It later offered increasing the ‘pay progression’ rate from 1.5 per cent to three per cent, as long as it could embark on a range of initiatives that would keep the amount it spends to remunerate Public Servants from growing. This would include introducing early retirements and voluntary redundancies.

General Manager of the Public Service Association, Reuben Maleka (pictured) said unions were sticking to their demand for an increase that came close to the consumer inflation rate of 7.4 per cent.

A major strike in the public sector last occurred in 2010 and paralysed schools and hospitals for 20 days.

That strike turned violent with Public Servants blocking hospital entrances and disrupting surgery in operating theatres. Non-striking workers were assaulted, and police quelled rioters with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon.

More Public Service News at https://psnews.com.au/category/world-news/?state=aps

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Estonia seals missile deal with Finland

The Estonian Department of Defence says an agreement with its Finnish counterpart to integrate their coastal missile systems will ultimately see the two nations control the entire Gulf of Finland.

Speaking with Finnish journalists, Estonian Minister of Defence, Hanno Pevkur said once the preliminary agreement was put into operation “the Baltic Sea will be NATO’s internal sea when Finland and Sweden join the Alliance”.

He agreed the move could potentially cut off Russia’s naval headquarters in St Petersburg from its Baltic fleet, at least by sea.

Kaliningrad would become Russia’s only access to this important body of water. It is a small enclave that Russia acquired during World War II, located between Poland and Lithuania, and is home to Russia’s Baltic Sea Fleet.

Mr Pevkur (pictured) said the flight range of Estonian and Finnish missiles was greater than the width of the Gulf of Finland.

“This means that we can connect our missile defences and share all our information with each other,” the Minister said.

Finland is already equipped with surface-to-sea missiles, while Estonia is due to take receipt of Blue Spear missiles from Proteus Advanced Systems, a joint venture between Israel and Singapore.

When signing the deal to purchase the Blue Spear missiles last year, Minister of Defence, Kalle Laanet described them as “one of the most hi-tech weapon systems of all time”.

Estonia’s Chief of Navy, Juri Saska, said the Blue Spear weapon system “will form the cornerstone of Estonian naval defence for decades to come”.

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Support for Trump plan to purge bureaucracy

 Several prominent members of the United States Republican Party, including possible 2024 presidential candidates, have said they support former President Donald Trump's plan to make it easier to dismiss Federal Public Servants.

This means that even if Mr Trump does not run again, the next Republic President might try to reimpose the Executive Order known as Schedule F. 

 Increasingly concerned Democrats are moving to block that possibility with six Senators, led by Tim Kaine, introducing legislation to protect career officials against future efforts to reimpose the deeply controversial Trump-era order, which was rescinded by President Joe Biden at the start of his term.

However, Former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo and Republican Senator, Ted Cruz said they supported using a measure like Schedule F to reform the Federal bureaucracy and strip Public Servants from their positions in crucial Government Agencies.

Others, including Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis and Senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott showed openness to the approach.

Those aligned with Mr Trump on Schedule F say the apolitical Public Service is a myth — that it is stacked with liberals who go all out to block conservatives from exercising policy muscle won fairly in elections.

However others see that argument as cover for a power play to destroy the Public Service, disrupt continuity of Government, trigger mass resignations, establish loyalty tests, politicise the bureaucracy and send a chilling effect through virtually every Agency.

Mr Pompeo (pictured) said Schedule F was a step in the right direction.

“We need to do more to hold the Washington bureaucracy accountable. Great employees need to be rewarded and under-performers shown the door," Mr Pompeo said.

"With our security and economy at risk, we need effective institutions. Americans don't want bureaucrats or ideologues; we want competence."

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Canada's hybrid work proposals ‘threat to health’

Canadian Federal Public Servants are complaining that the Government's plan to get them back to the office after COVID-19 is confusing, disjointed and jeopardises health and safety.

This follows the Treasury Board’s release of guidelines on hybrid work arrangements, tasking Departments with deciding "whether the location of work can be made flexible, to what extent, and how".

Treasury Board spokesperson, Barb Couperus said it was up to Deputy Heads of Departments (Permanent Secretaries) to make decisions about health and safety, guided by public health authorities and workplace health and safety committees.

"Given the diversity of the Federal Government’s workforce and operations, there will be no one-size-fits-all," Ms Couperus said, noting work sites varied from coastguard ships to laboratories and prisons.

President of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, Jennifer Carr, said the Treasury Board’s decision to devolve the responsibility of figuring out how to bring employees back into the office to individual Departments meant approaches were not co-ordinated and varied widely. 

She said that made it difficult for the union to give guidance to members on how a proper return to work should happen.

Ms Carr (pictured) said that given many of the Institute’s 60,000 members had been working on the front lines since the start of the pandemic, she was seeking assurances that workplaces were safe.

The Canadian Association of Professional Employees called for a suspension of return to offices, citing concern with “the serious and unnecessary risk to the health and safety” of its members being required to return to the workplace as the COVID-19 pandemic entered a seventh wave. 

Association President, Greg Phillips said members had not been given any rationale for why it was necessary to start hybrid working and come back into the workplace now.

"Treat us like the professionals we are, show us the rationale, explain to us why it's necessary. Otherwise we're left to just wonder — to not know what the heck is going on," Mr Phillips said.

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Trump promises to ‘purge’ bureaucracy

Former United States President, Donald Trump is ready to declare war on the Federal Public Service should he regain power in the 2024 election.

Former aides close to Mr Trump (pictured) have been set to work reviving and expanding his signature proposal to upend the Public Service, quickly purging thousands of Federal employees if he were to return to office. 

The plan would bring back Schedule F, a workforce initiative Mr Trump pushed in the 11th hour of his term to politicise the bureaucracy.

His former and current confidantes are, through a network of Trump-loyal think tanks and public policy organisations, creating lists of names to supplant existing Public Servants.

They have identified 50,000 current employees to dismiss under the new authority they seek to create, though they expect to only actually fire a fraction of that total and hope the resulting “chilling effect” would cause the rest to fall in line. 

In October 2020 Mr Trump signed his controversial Executive Order creating Schedule F, a new class of Federal employees exempted from the competitive service.

The Order sought to remove career Federal workers in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating” jobs from the General Schedule into a new job classification where virtually all of their Public Service protections were absent.

Although the Trump Administration began efforts to reclassify jobs into the new Schedule F, they ultimately were unable to move any workers before January 2021, and President Joe Biden quickly signed an Executive Order rescinding the edict as one of his first acts as President. 

The former Trump Administration officials envision quickly shifting many employees under the new classification, making those positions eligible for quick hiring and firing without the normal protections afforded to Public Servants.

The new flexibility would allow a future Trump Administration to get rid of any employees it deems as standing in the way of implementing its agenda and replace them with loyalists. 

“It literally takes five minutes to reissue it,” a former Trump Administration official said of Schedule F’s revival.

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