Sadtu finally claims victory on OSD

By Ofentse Mokae
26 November 2009

The South African Democratic Teachers Union says its patience, consistency and collective leadership have finally paid off.

This follows after the education department announced that the Occupation Specific Dispensation for teachers being implemented in full before Christmas.

Sadtu says teachers have been waiting for months.

The union says teachers will now receive the payment in full and not partially as offered by the department at one stage.

The union sent letters of demand yesterday, and the department has now announced it will pay for the full agreement in the current financial year.

Last month the union accepted a R2,3 billion made available by National Treasury for the partial implementation of OSD to be implemented.

This was done although the total cost of implementation of OSD was R4,5 billion, SADTU took the R2,3billion with the view that the remaining money will become available in April 2010 next year.

In a statement Sadtu general secretary Mugwena Maluke said the victory was proof to other opportunistic organisations who tried to claim easy victories on the processes that led to the signing of the OSD agreement.

"We are aware, our members nearly lost patience in the process but we want to assure them that in the end, SADTU has come out victorious," Maluleke said.

We would like to thank our members who remained committed to the union by supporting the leadership in our endeavour to close this chapter on OSD.

SADTU is the largest union in the public service with 246,280 members and represents two-thirds of teachers.