Strike on ice as unions, top brass talk

Unions leading the strike at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) say that permanently ending their protest action will depend on how fresh negotiations with the university’s management, scheduled to wrap up on March 2, pan out.

In the meantime, the unions have agreed to suspend the strike pending the outcome.

On Tuesday, at a meeting facilitated by Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training Buti Manamela, the university and striking staff members undertook to begin talks to try to end the seven-week strike.

The unions leading the strike are the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union, the Tertiary Education Union of South Africa and the National Tertiary Education Union.

Spokesperson for the unions Milton Estrice told the Mail & Guardian that they had suspended the strike because they did not want to jeopardise the academic programme, but said they had not called it off.

“We are hopeful that management will come with the same [constructive] attitude and that they did not only commit in front of the [deputy] minister, and now that he is not here then they come with their own side tricks to make it not work,” said Estrice.

Classes are expected to resume on Monday. However, Estrice said the unions would have a mass meeting on

Monday to report back to their members on how the negotiations went.

“Monday, it is assumed that the students would be here and that the programme will run. That is the understanding but we will see how things unfold,” he said.

Vice-chancellor Professor Thandwa Mthembu told the M&G that he hoped an amicable settlement could be reached through the fresh negotiations.

Mthembu said the strike had taken so long because he had to “stand my ground” and say no to practices that had, over the years, become a culture at the university.

He said when he joined the university, its council — the highest decision-making body — gave him a mandate to lower the salary bill, which was eating up 70% of DUT’s total income.

He said that in the past, when unions called for a salary increase, there had been no hesitation by management to increase salaries using funds that were earmarked for capital expenditure and maintenance.

“As a result, those areas of expenditure have suffered a lot, and you can actually see it in our buildings. We need equipment in our laboratories, we need to improve our lecture rooms and there are all sorts of things that we need such as equipment and so forth — which, for a university of technology, quite a lot of these are outdated,” said Mthembu.

He said the university did have money but it was not intended for salaries and would be used for its intended purpose.