• State Information Technology Agency employees, as part of the Public Servants` Association of South Africa, are planning a nationwide shutdown on 18 October after salary negotiations reached a deadlock.  

• The shutdown is aimed to create `inconvenience` for government departments, which will be without technical support, and impact government services, including hospitals and grant payments.

• The PSA said workers will not return to work unless their demands of above-inflation salary increases are met. 

Government services, including hospitals, Home Affairs and grant payments across the country could be without technical support on Wednesday as thousands of State Information Technology Agency (SITA) employees down tools.

SITA employees who are members of the Public Servants` Association of SA (PSA) handed over a strike notice last week, indicating their intention to participate in a national shutdown after holding a number of lunchtime pickets.

The shutdown will continue indefinitely until workers` demands are met, a spokesperson for the union told News24.

This comes as negotiations between SITA and the PSA over salary increases for the 2023/24 financial year reached a deadlock in June.

Talks have been ongoing since February, with the PSA demanding an above-inflation increase of 7.5%. SITA`s latest offer was 5%.

`The PSA is concerned about SITA’s attitude towards collective bargaining and the progress in concluding salary negotiations for the 2022/23 financial year [...] The PSA urges the [Communication and Technologies] Minister [Mondi Gungubele] to intervene and instruct the SITA board of directors to improve the salary offer to 7.5%,` the PSA said in a statement.  

PSA general manager Reuben Maleka said leadership changes also impacted salary negotiations. 

`Between June and July this year, Minister [Gungubele] changed the SITA board at a time when we would also have salary negotiations, which also delayed negotiations. Over 10 members left the board,` he said. 

Salary negotiations were previously referred to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration in September this year, but no settlement was reached. 

The PSA is a key union in the sector, representing over 230 000 employees in the public service overall. It also represents the majority of SITA employees. 

Maleka said the shutdown aimed to create `inconvenience` for government departments because there will a lack of employees to restore any system that experiences technical glitches or shuts down. 

Maleka told News24: `Employees are up in arms [...] The cost of living is too high, and with petrol prices increasing, all prices will increase, including food.`

`Workers want an increase because they want to live,` he added.

Meanwhile, SITA is confident that the planned shutdown will be averted and said it was intent on breaking the deadlock between itself and PSA. 

`We have invested effort and energy towards finding lasting solution to this impasse. We have reached out to the union on a number of occasions and presented options which both sides could explore aimed at enabling us to move beyond the disputed issues,` said SITA spokesperson Tlali Tlali, adding that SITA`s wage offer of 5% was `gaining traction and resonates favourably with many employees`. 

Tlali said the industrial action would not affect its IT systems. `SITA activated its contingency plans to mitigate the impact of the industrial action on service delivery to government. The plans include reconstituting structures responsible for operational oversight and business continuity. To date, there has not been any service delivery failure occasioned by the industrial action,` said Tlali.