TAWU and BOGOWU declare a deadlock

The two unions were expected to serve the Director of Public Service Management (DPSM) with a letter declaring the deadlock this morning. This means should the DPSM proceed to finalise issues in contention, the two unions will approach the courts for interpretation of the issues. The issue of which unions should be admitted to the Council has become a major tug of war between the so called "Big Five" unions on the one hand, BOGOWU and TAWU on the other.

The "Big Five" unions, which are members of BOFEPUSO, the new federation of unions comprising some government employee unions, are Botswana Public Employees Union, Botswana Secondary Teachers Unions, Botswana Teachers' Union, National Amalgamated Local Government and Public Workers Union.  In contention is BOFEPUSO's insistance that a threshold of 36,000 members should be the minimum admission requirement for inclusion into the council.