SAfrica government warns strikers over wages

JOHANNESBURG, June 12 (Reuters) South Africa's government today warned striking civil servants it would start docking their wages as officials braced for a planned nationwide boycott that union leaders say will bring the country to a standstill.

The powerful COSATU labour federation has called the strike to pressure the government into meeting its demands for a minimum 10 per cent wage hike for public sector workers.

Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said strikers would pay for their action.

''As they withhold their labour, government will act within the labour relations framework and in doing so we are going to withhold the salaries of those public service workers who have engaged in industrial action,'' she told a news conference.

''These deductions will be made on Friday.'' The government says its pay rise offer still stands at 6.5 per cent, but will seriously consider a recommendation by mediators for a 7.25 percent increase.

''Their (mediators) proposal requires us to put more money on the table ... we will look at it very closely at the bargaining council today,'' Fraser-Moleketi said.

COSATU-affiliated unions and independent labour bodies have been lobbying their members to engage in sympathy strikes from Wednesday in solidarity with civil servants, whose 12-day-old strike has caused havoc at schools and hospitals across the country.

A court has granted municipal workers permission to join the sympathy strike, SAPA news agency reported, raising the prospect that the mass action will have a event greater impact on the everyday life of South Africans.

In a speech to parliament in Cape Town, President Thabo Mbeki said it was deplorable that workers had used the protracted labour dispute to engage in what he described as criminal activities.

''What kind of society are we building and what moral lessons are we imparting when insults, violence against fellow workers and damage to property become the stock-in-trade during protests?'' Mbeki said.

Some unions, including the mineworkers, have said they will not take part in the sympathy strike because they have not had enough time to inform their employers as required by law.

Fraser-Moleketi said the unions' ''preoccupation with the issue of percentages'' had taken attention from the government's real wage offer, which would amount to gradual increases of up to 15.7 per cent including allowances to end the mass action which began on June 1.

The government also has issued letters of dismissal to over 600 essential services workers, particularly nurses and teachers, which it says are engaging in illegal action.

But unions say they will not end the protest until the government dramatically improves its offer.

The government has issued letters of dismissal to over 600 essential services workers, particularly nurses and teachers, which it says are engaging in illegal action.

Willie Madisha, COSATU's president, blamed the government for the impasse. ''This is not the kind of bold decisive action on the part of the government that we need to ensure that the strike is resolved,'' he said.

REUTERS GT RAI2308