Nehawu protests at Unisa after failed talks on pay hikes

The National Education Health & Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) will stage protests on Thursday at all University of SA (Unisa) campuses after salary increment talks deadlocked.

Nehawu gave management 48 hours’ notice as it expressed its intention to launch protected industrial action.

About 4,000 people would participate in the protest on campuses on Thursday.

Negotiations between the union and Unisa management started in November 2016, when workers unsuccessfully requested a 14% salary increase. The university was only prepared to give 6%.

After the failed discussions, negotiations were moved to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA). The CCMA set the matter down for conciliation on January 24 and, despite the efforts of the commissioners, the dispute remained unresolved, with the university lowering its offer to 4.5%.

Unisa spokesman Martin Ramotshela said the offer was informed by the financial difficulties the university was facing, as well as the general uncertainty in the higher education sector on the fees issue. The union said the university was not engaging with it honestly as it had squandered money on information technology programmes that did not work and had paid the vice-chancellor an exorbitant R5m salary excluding bonuses.

“Our members are disgusted by the fact that just recently, Unisa wasted more than R100m on an IT system to be used for purposes to register students for the 2017 academic year,” said Nehawu’s spokesman Khaya Xaba. “Unfortunately this system is unstable and not of benefit to the institution and is regarded as a wasteful expenditure.”

Nehawu had also called for the implementation of Labour Relations Amendment Act rules for workers who had been on temporary contract for more than three months. The union demanded that those workers’ employment contracts be converted to permanent ones.

Xaba said Unisa was being arrogant by refusing to implement the Labour Relations Amendment Act, even though there were 1,500 workers who had been on temporary contract for longer than three months and still had not been absorbed permanently.

Ramotshela said measures had been put in place to ensure that there was minimal or no disruption to the operations of the university; and that the property of the university and lives of nonstriking staff and other stakeholders was safe.