EFF labels Unisa’s insourcing agreement a ‘raw deal’ for workers
PRETORIA: After nearly a year of haggling defined by protests and a breakdown in talks, Unisa announced an agreement to insource all services yesterday.
Unisa council chairperson Dr Boni Mehlomakhulu said they would be appointing 910 staff members within the cleaning, security, gardening and waste-removal services.
“For 10 months the multi-stakeholder task team had been exploring and debating various models designed to deliver on its objective.
“At a special meeting of the executive committee council on October 19, the task team finally submitted a proposed model for insourcing currently outsourced services and staff, which was approved.”
Mehlomakhulu said the agreement to insource workers would be capped at the current outsourced contract value of R112 million and based on a shared model that applied a 70/30 principle, with 70 percent allocated to salaries and 30 percent to operational costs.
“The stakeholders agree that 910 of the 1 413 affected employees will benefit from the insourcing based on a fair selection process. This takes into account South African citizenship, matric qualification, private security industry regulatory authority verification for security personnel, and at least a year’s service at Unisa”
He said the termination of all affected contracts for outsourced services would be completed as soon as possible and the procurement of new service providers for the shared services model commenced immediately.
“The stakeholders that an ex gratia agree salary payment of R3 500 for three months (totalling R10 500) be made to all members of staff who are not selected for insourced employment.”
However, this agreement was not well received by the EFF Student Command. It distanced itself from the deal, which “excluded 503 workers”.
National president Mpho Morolane said: “When we barged into the council of this university demanding for insourcing, we were embarking on a social justice mandate to ensure that there should be a redress for the vulnerable workers at the university. We can’t be part of an agreement whereby 500 workers are going to lose employment.”
He said it could not be a historic event when a percentage of the people would be losing employment.
“We are aware that in all these universities we got a raw deal as far as insourcing is concerned and, therefore, we must go back to the drawing board and see how best we can combat the system.”