Marianne Merten
The Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) has ordered the University of the Western Cape (UWC) to reinstate a lecturer whose contract was not renewed in the wake of his complaints against the head of his department.
When Brian Williams, formerly the director of the Western Cape Department of Labour, arrived at the university this year to teach a labour relations module, another lecturer had been appointed in his place.
Several written inquiries by Williams to the university asking why the contract was not renewed were unanswered.
Ruling in his favour, the CCMA points out the university had received at least five letters, but only offered one “brief response” after the matter was referred to arbitration in March. “This is no less than an indication that the decision not to renew the contract was based on arbitrariness, if not vengeance.”
As Williams was not informed his contract would not be renewed, the CCMA ruled he “could reasonably have expected” to return to his post this year.
“The non-renewal of the applicant’s contract was riddled with such covert conduct that I can’t help but smell a rat in the whole process,” the ruling read, finding that the former labour activist had been unfairly dismissed.
The contractual dispute came after Williams logged a complaint of misconduct against the chair of the management department because he had reduced final year students’ marks by between 3% and 5% in 2000. However, the university cleared Professor Philip Hirschsohn of any untoward action in November last year.
Williams also complained about Dr Russel Ruiters, the then head of the UWC industrial psychology department, for not considering his application to teach in the department’s Masters programme.
In its decision the CCMA held the university had not shown the dismissal was related to Williams’s conduct, performance or a change in UWC’s “operational requirements”. Instead it emerged Ruiters did not find fault with Williams’s performance, as assessed by his students’ pass rate and relationship with him.
The CCMA ruling also points out that universities, established under Acts of Parliament, must exercise their public powers accordingly. “Their actions need not only be transparent, accountable, development-orientated or have good human resource management and career development, but must also be rational,” the ruling read.
UWC did not respond to requests for comment on the ruling.