UJ insourcing deal ‘illegitimate’

University of Johannesburg Vice Chancellor Ihron Rensburg.

University of Johannesburg Vice Chancellor Ihron Rensburg.

Published Nov 9, 2015

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Johannesburg - University of Johannesburg students have denounced as illegitimate a bid by the administration to resolve the insourcing impasse.

The university announced on Sunday that the vice chancellor had signed an agreement with workers which called for an insourcing task team to create a plan by February.

The agreement, which emanated from protests that grew out of the national #FeesMustFall movement, calls for outsourced workers to be transferred “through an agreement process” to the university, and calls for workers to return to work tomorrow. But the FeesMustFall movement said this was not enough.

The movement dismissed the university’s statement as “vague”, calling instead for a guarantee that the workers would not be fired, and for a living wage for workers as well as safety improvements.

The university posted photos of an agreement with signatures from Vice Chancellor Ihron Rensburg, a representative from the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) and one of the outsourced workers online.

However, the UJ FeesMustFall social media accounts quickly responded that the worker who signed had not been chosen by the protesting workers as a representative.

The movement said workers had already been criminalised for protesting and called this mandate a violation of their rights.

“Nehawu, stop it already. You’ve failed the workers over and over again and now you’re selling them LIVE,” Twitter user @ETVEE said.

The university agreement also said “the end-goal of insourcing workers is to achieve decent work and a decent wage, and that insourcing must result in the significant improvement in the standard of living of the workers concerned”.

The UJ FeesMustFall movement pointed out that the agreement did not give a date by which workers must be insourced.

Outgoing Student Representative Council secretary Mangaliso Mkhonto said he did not support the agreement.

“It seeks to undermine the process we’re advocating for,” he said.

Mkhonto said they would prefer to meet personally with the vice-chancellor.

Protests at the university turned ugly last week with 141 protesters supporting the workers arrested on Friday

for allegedly violating a court order interdicting protesters from being within 500m of the campus.

@bgirledukate

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