Andy Duffy
The University of the Western Cape (UWC) slapped a court order on its workers this week to snuff out an uprising sparked by its management’s cost-cutting proposals.
The Labour Court in Johannesburg issued an urgent interdict against the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) and its UWC representatives, after dozens of workers blockaded the Bellville campus, occupied offices and allegedly assaulted and threatened other staff.
The union’s UWC representatives deny the assault allegations, but concede its members’ whirlwind industrial action was illegal and largely out of their control. The court also ordered the union to pay UWC’s costs – an estimated R18 000.
The stand-off follows a long-simmering dispute between the union, representing 700 of the 900 non-academic UWC staff, and management, led by vice-chancellor Cecil Abrahams.
Abrahams two weeks ago presented the union with a menu of cost-cutting options – ranging from slashing medical aid benefits to scrapping housing subsidies – to cut the university’s R16,4-million deficit.
The alternative is forced retrenchments among its 1 300 academic and non-academic staff.
Abrahams was unavailable for comment this week. But unconfirmed reports suggest one in six jobs at UWC could be under threat, with the service staff bearing the brunt. Abrahams’s menu enraged the union because until it was tabled, Nehawu’s main talks with management had been about annual wage negotiations.
But Abrahams’s list also includes staff forgoing increases. “This will not affect the current deficit,” a management memorandum notes, “but avoid a further increase in this deficit.”
Another proposal is to cut salaries. A third is to scrap bonuses – a 13th cheque paid on employees’ birthdays – which would save R9,5-million.
“Not all the above options,” the memorandum notes, “are necessarily viable from a financial, academic or managerial perspective.” It is also not clear whether the belt-tightening extends to senior management.
Further unnerving the union, Abrahams last week called on non-union staff for their cost-cutting ideas, apparently undermining Nehawu’s position as the workers’ sole bargaining unit.
“They are not cost-saving mechanisms,” the union says. “They … require staff to give up their contractual benefits in order to avoid retrenchments.
“Workers are being asked to bear the brunt of this rectorate’s mismanagement.”
UWC’s cost cutting is symptomatic of initiatives on campuses across the country. Declining government subsidies and rising student debt have snookered many institutions. UWC has already clashed with its students, after it took a similar hardline stance against debtors at the start of the year.
But Abrahams has also been under pressure from non-academic and academic staff to disclose details of his package and those enjoyed by his senior lieutenants.
Many on the campus also support Nehawu’s claims that his cost-cutting menu is just a stopgap, in the absence of a firm, long- term survival plan.
The union spent much of this week trying to persuade Abrahams to lift the interdict – without success.
The two sides have now agreed to go to the Council for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.