TUESDAY, 8.30AM:
TALKS over the looming teacher strike (see below) continued until late night, but indications on Tuesday morning are that the strike will go ahead as planned. Teachers belonging to the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union will attend school each day until 10.00AM before withdrawing. But talks, mediated by negotiator Brian Currin, will continue.
MONDAY, 6.30PM:
TALKS between government and the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, which is on the brink of calling a strike of the country’s 100000 teachers, are going well, Education Minister Sibusiso Bengu said on Monday afternoon.
“Both sides have expressed a commitment to resolve the dispute and to continue meeting for as long as necessary in order to reach agreement,” he said after three hours of talks in Cape Town. The talks are expected to continue into the night.
Sadtu says it is willing to talk through the night, if necessary, to reach agreement.
Meanwhile South African Human Rights Commission chairman Barney Pityana has said the Ministry of Education and Unions must do everything possible to avoid a strike.
“Industrial action that leads to children not being educated could be a violation of the right to basic education,” Pityana wrote in letters to Education Minister Sibusiso Bengu and South African Democratic Teachers’ Union president Willy Madisha.
MONDAY, NOON:
THE government and the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union will meet on Monday to try for the last time to reach a compromise that will avert the planned Sadtu strike.
Meetings between the African National Congress and its alliance partners the Congress of South Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party with Sadtu and government are also planned.
Sadtu is protesting staff rationalisation regulations that allow provincial education departments to set staff levels and teacher pupil ratios according to their own budgetary allowances. The union wants to stick with nationally determined teacher-pupil ratios.
Meanwhile Education Minister Sibusiso Bengu, whose head has been demanded by Nationalist Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk and defended with vim by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, meets with the council of education ministers from the nine provinces.
The likely failure of talks will lead to a partial withdrawal of teaching staff by Sadtu on Tuesday and an all-out strike on Wednesday.
Sadtu is worried that the cash-strapped provinces, especially KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, will retrench extensively if given the option by national government. Publicly the union says allowing different teacher-pupil ratios in different provinces will allow the inequalities of the past to persist. But the real problem in negotiations is that the union cannot be seen to be favouring teachers in certain provinces over those in others. Working conditions should be the same nationally.
Sadtu is demanding the withdrawal of the new regulations, a moratorium on retrenchments during redeployment talks and a say in the allocation of national and provincial education budgets. The government simply won’t allocate more money to paying teachers.
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