Salary increase from R170,000 to R350,000 in three years

South Africa’s Parliament is planning to double the salaries of its full-time staff over the next three years.

The Sunday Times reported that “incorporated staff, including cleaners and other low-category workers, can expect to earn R350,000 by 2026, up from the R170,00 they earn now”.

The publication said the planned salary increases followed negotiations with the National Education and Health and Allied Workers’ Union.

These services used to be outsourced. However, Parliament did not renew service providers’ contracts in 2018 and insourced the staff.

Parliament’s spokesperson and division manager, Moloto Mothapo, said the salary hikes were needed to “bring them in line with existing salary scales”.

He told the Sunday Times that Parliament was correcting an inequitable situation where it operated with two different entry-level structures.

This news is amidst negotiations regarding public sector wages in a highly constrained financial environment.

At the end of October, the Department of Public Service and Administration offered a 4.7% wage increase to 1.3 million government workers.

This offer was an increase from the 3% during the initial Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) meeting on 1 October 2024.

Trade unions rejected the 3% salary increase offer, which was a counter to their initial demand for a 12% increase that the government had already turned down.

The public sector wage negotiations are closely watched as it will show how serious the government is about reducing public spending.

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has a strong focus on reducing the public sector wage bill, which has increased rapidly.

This wage bill includes the compensation of government employees at the national, provincial, and local levels and wages of employees at public entities and state-owned enterprises.

Godongwana said one of the major risks to South Africa’s financial future is the public servant wage bill, which has grown strongly in recent years.

South Africa’s public service has long been described as bloated and overpaid, with the National Treasury taking measures to slow the growth.

Over the past three decades, the public servant wage bill has increased from 5.6% of GDP in 1994/95 to 10.4% in 2023/24.

The National Treasury said this is largely the result of fast-growing average remuneration costs of government employees in the past thirty years.

The average government employee earns R41,200 per month, nearly double that of the average salary in South Africa of R26,800 per month.

The median public-service average monthly earnings have exceeded the national average by at least 50% since 2019.

Parliament’s plan to double salaries of some of its workers over the next three years flies in the face of Godongwana’s plan.

While the unions celebrated the planned salary hikes, it is often overlooked that it means that money must be taken from somewhere else to fund the increases.

That means that there will be less money for things like education, policing, and infrastructure development.

The rapid growth of public service salaries in comparison with the average remuneration in South Africa is shows in the chart below.