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The National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] congratulates the dedication shown by our University of Cape Town [UCT] Shop Stewards in guidance of our regional officials leading to the signing of an agreement with UCT in order to avert further strike actions on the 13th September 2017.

The above agreement comes after marathon talks between all trade unions, and management in UCT following an insistence by NEHAWU that its members cannot join a strike action which its deliberations on shift roster for caterers were tabled with UCT long time ago, but rather all other issues affecting workers post the insourcing must be addressed as part of averting further strike actions.

Indeed the agreement resolves the issue of shift roster, and 4 hour issue raised by other trade unions (though partially) in their strike notice whilst addressing in full all issues raised by NEHAWU in its dispute relating to Sunday, and Night Shift Allowance. The agreement contains the following:

• Establishment of a Task Team to deal at a shift roster for caterers with implementation target of new roster being 01 October 2017;
• Appointment of casual-full time 4 hour workers to 8 hours on full-time which their migration framework to other services will have to be decided by the task team;
• Payment of Sunday work on scale of 1.5 per day as directed by the BCEA; and
• Payment of Night Shift allowance at 10% x hourly rate of Pay Class 5 (Pay Class five is equivalent to R 11 649.09) irrespective of the pay class in which the worker falls.

NEHAWU believes that the agreement is also a smack in the face of Department of Labour Inspectors who initially gave a verdict against NEHAWU argument that UCT was not compliant with BCEA, but rather they cleverly used Cost-to-Company as a way of escaping their legal responsibility.

NEHAWU will form part of the task team which will deal with issues partially resolved, and we believe that with all other unions having agreed with UCT yesterday that the workable shift roster for caterers is the one which was submitted by NEHAWU months ago, the resolution of the shift roster issue will be achieved way before the intended deadline.

Despite all other issues being resolved, NEHAWU will further push forward in finding solution on the wrong placement of some workers in Gardening services, Job Evaluation issues for cleaners at lower level, and the issue of deep cleaning.

Issued by NEHAWU