A strike led by Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) against against corruption, job losses and the government’s reversal of public sector wage hikes was badly timed as the country grapples with an economic downturn worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Cape Chamber of Commerce & Industry said.

With the National Treasury struggling to find R10-billion to bail out failing national carrier South African Airways, while Covid-19 regulations have led to massive job losses, government workers who depend on taxpayers for their wages should have thought twice before demanding more money, Cape Chamber president Janine Myburgh said in a statement issued on Thursday.

“The ... strike ... was a perfect example of poor timing on the part of union leadership, and an exercise in futility if reason prevails now that the day has come and gone,” she said.

Cosatu was joined by three other labour federations in Wednesday’s protest, which saw workers marching to key government offices around the country including the National Treasury, arguing that workers were bearing the brunt of corruption in both the public and private sectors.

Unions are also angry over the government’s decision to go back on wage increases that had been set to be effected from April, in line with a three-year wage deal agreed in 2018. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government says it can no longer afford to honour the agreement.

Myburgh said in light of the economic ravages wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic, “common-sense instruction” should have made it clear to the unions that there was no money to meet their demands.

“It’s quite simple. In normal times taxes are paid by companies on their profits, and they also send the Treasury pay-as-you-earn income taxes owed by their staff. Value-added taxes flow into the Treasury from whence they are directed to the various government departments,” she said.

“Right now the private sector is struggling, tax receipts are therefore falling, and private sector jobs are being lost. A public sector strike can only make matters worse for everyone. If the inflation-beating salary increases are granted, it will be an empty victory at best.”

On Wednesday the department of public service and administration said government employees who heeded the Cosatu-led call not to go to work would not be paid for the day.

The protest was a rare show of public anger against the government by Cosatu, which has been in a tripartite alliance with the ruling African National Congress and the South African Communist Party since 1990, helping keep the African National Congress in power since the end of white minority rule in 1994.

But now Cosatu says corruption has emerged among the biggest threat to the country’s hard-won democracy and is “like cancer eating at the moral fibre of our society and eroding the moral standing of our revolution and the cause for which our people laid down their lives”.