SOUTH AFRICA: Wits staff and students fight restructuring

Fikile Majola, general secretary of the National Education, Health and
Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU), on June 7 called on university workers and
students around the world to offer urgent solidarity to the workers of
the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg. “NEHAWU appeals
to its brothers and sisters in the international labour and progressive
movement to come to its aid in the fight against the spectre of job loss”,
Majola said.

On February 25, Wits' university council decided to retrench more than
620 workers — 25% of the work force — and outsource their jobs to private
contractors. The retrenchments will be completed by June 30. Wits plans
to outsource its catering, cleaning, and maintenance departments, saving
the university about 68 million rands over five years.

Majola pointed out that Wits' decision was one in a series of attacks
on workers' jobs and unions in post-apartheid South Africa, the victims
of which are mainly black workers and their independent unions. Tertiary
education and public sector workers are being hit the hardest. NEHAWU is
South Africa's main university workers' union and an affiliate of the Congress
of South African Trade Unions.

Majola explained that the retrenchments will throw whole families into
poverty and outsourcing will replace secure, unionised jobs with casual,
“flexible” labour hired from labour hire companies on a low wage/minimum
benefit basis.

“Wages, for instance, are likely to fall by at least 30% in the affected
departments. Further, it is unlikely in the extreme that most of the retrenched
campus workers will be re-employed by the outsourcing companies”, Majola
stated. “Given that the majority of affected workers are black, the effect
will also be to reinforce the legacy of the apartheid past. In particular,
it will undermine attempts to institute employment equity for black workers,
who were the main victims of apartheid.”

Majola also charged that most of the workers to be retrenched are NEHAWU
stalwarts. “We can only interpret the management's decision to outsource
as strongly informed by a drive to smash the union on the campus. NEHAWU
has never been forgiven for its militant struggles of 1993 and 1995 against
Wits management.”

The retrenchments are part of a broader process of neo-liberal restructuring
at the University of the Witwatersrand known as “Wits 2001”. A package
of “reforms” will downsize “unprofitable” disciplines and reduce the number
of students and staff in favour of a university orientated towards the
needs of big business and wealthy students, Majola said. If NEHAWU is defeated,
Majola warned, contract lecturers, the social science faculties and students
from working-class backgrounds who cannot afford to pay full tuition fees
“will all be under the gun”.

“The effect of the Wits 2001 plan will be to sideline goals such as
a decent working environment, access to higher education and critical intellectual
activity in favour of an orientation towards the needs of the privileged
and the effective privatisation of the University of the Witwatersrand”,
Majola said.

NEHAWU has been holding pickets for more than three months and is now
combining legal proceedings with mass worker, student and academic mobilisations
to force the management to halt the retrenchments.

“NEHAWU has issued a national and international appeal for support in
its struggle to save jobs. In the days of globalisation, we must fight
against neo-liberalism from above with workers' solidarity and action from
below”, Majola said.

NEHAWU is asking trade unions and student and youth groups around the
world to publicise the Wits workers' struggle, pass resolutions of support
for their struggle and protest at South African embassies against the anti-worker,
neo-liberal restructuring of the University of the Witwatersrand.

Protest letters can be sent to Wits vice-chancellor Colin Bundy, fax
+27 11 339 8215 or email <160CJB@atlas.wits.ac.za>.
Send copies to <kgaugelo@nehawu.org.za>,
<tebogo@nehawu.org.za> and
<resist@africamail.com>.
For regular email updates on the Wits struggle, send a blank message to
<Resist_Wits2001-subscribe@onelist.com>.

BY NORM DIXON

From GLW issue 409