A pay strike has brought teaching at Walter Sisulu University (WSU) in East London to a standstill, Dispatch Online reported on Thursday.
It said the action by academic and administrative staff came just weeks before more than 21 000 students were due to sit for mid-year examinations.
The lecturers vowed to continue the work stoppage until they were given a 12% increase across-the-board.
”Management’s insulting zero percent [salary increase] offer … is totally insane,” staff bodies said in a media statement.
They are the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union, the National Tertiary Education Staff Union and the National Union of Tertiary Employees of South Africa.
The strike affected all three institutions that merged last year to form the university, one of South Africa’s biggest tertiary institutions.
Salary talks had been under way since October — four months after the merger between Transkei University, the Eastern Cape Technikon and Border Technikon.
Negotiations deadlocked on Wednesday when the unions declared a dispute, claiming management was negotiating in bad faith and with ”arrogance”.
The unions said: ”This action shall prolong until such time that management positively respond and our demands are fully met.”
WSU spokesperson Karuna Krishanlal-Gopal said matters were being complicated by the current process to end disparities between the 2 000 staff from the three merger parties.
”A general increase across-the-board at this stage of the merger would only exacerbate the imbalances in salaries of employees of the three institutions that formed WSU.”
Krishanlal-Gopal said 64% of the university’s budget went to personnel costs — 4,28% or R25,6-million above the national norm.
The university has two campuses in Mthatha, two in Butterworth, four in East London, one in Bhisho, one in Potsdam and one in Queenstown.
Interim vice-chancellor Professor Nicky Morgan is currently accompanying Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela on a trip to East Asia.
The costs for the trip were coming out of a research fund, the university said. – Sapa