Pretoria - Members of the #OutsourcingMustFall movement have accused tertiary institutions, the City of Tshwane and other institutions of reneging on certain agreements regarding outsourced workers.
They have threatened to shut down Gauteng, rendering it ungovernable for a day.
They held a press briefing on Wednesday and addressed three memorandums of demand they sent to the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), the University of Pretoria (UP) and to the Department of Higher Education and Training.
In these memorandums, they accuse the institutions and the department of failing to allow full participation of workers’ representatives in task teams set up to oversee insourcing; failure to ensure the reinstatement of dismissed workers or insourced jobs for those workers left unemployed through contract changes; and failure to agree with workers about wage increases and the date these increases will be effective from.
Austin Mofya said that they wanted to announce that following two meetings, the workers have expressed their dissatisfaction at the way the previous #OutsourcingMustFall agreements were being implemented, especially with TUT and UP. He believed that insourcing would be fair.
He said they were disappointed that nothing they had signed for had materialised.
“There is no clear insourcing taking place in those institutions and some of the institutions have (fired) workers for participating in #OutsourcingMustFall.”
He said they wanted to announce the intention of workers from UP, the University of Johannesburg, Wits University, TUT, Unisa, Tshwane South And North Colleges, Prasa, the Department of Basic Education and the City of Tshwane to render the province ungovernable.
He said they would be joined by retail workers. “The resolution these workers have taken is to make sure that there will be a Gauteng provincial shutdown coming soon.”
The initial date for this shutdown was next Monday but due to SRC elections in tertiary institutions, the students asked for an extension so they decided to postpone it.
They said they would have a definite date for the shutdown by Tuesday.
Other problems raised included that there was “cosmetic insourcing” where workers were given uniforms and staff cards without the R5 000 minimum wage agreed on, the dismissal of various employees (73 cleaners at TUT) even though it was agreed that they would not be fired.
“We want our own union. Where have you seen a union (Nehawu) that gets people fired? We don’t want them,” said Minah Motaung, one of the outsourced workers at TUT.
She said they were very angry at what was happening and that they could not guarantee that things would be peaceful during the Gauteng shutdown.
“We are very angry. We are struggling. Our children are starving. We will fight with any weapons we have in our hands. We work with mops but we know our rights,” Motaung said.
Pretoria News