All the positive outcomes from the recent successful hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be placed at risk should there be a widespread strike of public service employees, the SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) said.

This followed a nation-wide strike by some 200,000 members of the Public Servants Association (PSA) on Thursday to press for better wages.

"The fact that the South African Democratic Teachers' Union has announced that teachers would participate in the strike regardless of its timing, stands in contrast to a position of effectively equipping school leavers for the workforce," Sacci added in a statement.

"It further seems that the National Education, Health, and Allied Workers' Union (NEHAWU) has little regard for the fact that they represent approximately half a million persons who are employed in essential services, including nursing and the police services, where the lives of ordinary citizens would potentially be at risk during strike action."

Sacci said the far reaching consequences of mass protest action by these persons as well as the impact on the operations of government departments, ports of entry, hospitals and traffic officers would impede the country's hesitant recovery from the recent economic downturn.

It would also jeopardise the country's ability to generate a positive impression of South Africa as a desirable country with which to trade and in which to invest.

"The unintended consequences and the undesirable negative impacts of picketing and marches on other sectors of the economy, particularly on SMMEs [small, medium and micro enterprises], where unruly and destructive behaviour often takes place cannot be overlooked."

Sacci appealed to strikers to behave "in a responsible manner" in exercising their right to strike, and to Union leaders to ensure that businesses and consumers, which were not the intended targets of the strike, did not have their rights compromised by the strike activity.

Sacci also appealed to the Public Service Commission and to labour to negotiate in good faith and to reach agreement in the shortest possible time so as to avoid the impact that a wide ranging strike would have.