After a long struggle by outsourced workers a senior manager at the University of the Witwatersrand, Ian Armitage, resigned on 10 June 2011, after admitting to the allegations of racism against him. His resignation two days before his disciplinary hearing was welcomed with mixed feelings. This case has forced us to ask hard and poignant questions about the University and its lack of leadership in the fight against racism.
How is it possible that in a post-apartheid era, in an institution which commits itself to upholding “democracy, justice, equality, and freedom from racism and sexism” as enshrined in the Constitution and to the elimination of “discrimination based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation and disability”, a senior manager openly referred to workers as k****rs and baboons? Why did the University not respond swiftly and decisively to allegations of racism? The campaign against racism was led by outsourced workers and supported by other members of the university. It has led to animated debate and further campaigns against the entrenched and systemic oppression of outsourced workers.
This report is premised on the basic position that outsourced workers, who daily work at the institution, are members of the University community. Management has a responsibility to all who work and study at the University, including outsourced workers on campus. It is in the nature of outsourcing that the primary company, in this case the university, is able to absolve itself of any responsibility to the workers. Thus the University insists it only has a relation to the outsourced companies, and not the workers the companies employed by them. It does not recognise the workers. It is a position the university has steadfastly held to since the advent of outsourcing a decade ago and was recently reflected in the Vice Chancellor’s refusal[2] to meet with workers in his formal capacity. Instead he agreed only to meet workers in his individual capacity, which in fact perpetuates and reaffirms workers’ status as second class citizens at the University.
During the recent cleaning sector strike, from 8 August 2011 to 12 September 2011, workers were subjected to an interdict that disallowed them from being 20m from their place of employment for the duration of the strike. In accordance with the interdict, Wits University not only stopped workers from entering the campus, it blocked their access cards and issued a statement in support of scab labour. Thus the University took a clear, unequivocal position on the side of employers.
The aim of this report is to open a public conversation at the university about the conditions to which our colleagues, the outsourced workers, are daily being subjected to. It also aims to persuade the university immediately to terminate all the policies and practices that discriminate against these workers. Section II highlights some of the grievances workers have raised against the University and the contracted companies. Section III draws a comparison to the experience of outsourcing at the University of Cape Town. It looks at the implementation and significance of UCT’s Minimum Working Conditions Contract. Section IV concludes and makes recommendations to the University.
Historical background: origins of outsourcing
Outsourcing at Wits began in 2000, when the University handed over cleaning, catering, grounds and maintenance to private companies. The decision to outsource was taken by the Wits management and subsequently approved by the University Council, on the basis of a report prepared by the consulting firm University Management Associates (UMA), which was paid R4.5 million for this task. The decision was opposed by the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU), representing most of the affected workers; by the main student representative bodies, the Students’ Representative Council and the Postgraduate Association; and by the South African Students’ Congress, the leading student political formation. These groups, with others, joined to form the Wits Crisis Committee to oppose the outsourcing.
After “consulting” many “stakeholders” throughout the university in 1999-2000, UMA said the outsourcing would save Wits R30 million over five years; they later increased this figure to R68 million without explaining why.[3] Even more absurdly, they claimed that the outsourcing would bring “career opportunities” and “employment stability” to retrenched workers.
A group of “concerned Wits academics” criticised UMA’s assessment in a report presented to the Wits Council in May 2000.[4] The report contended that the UMA report was confusing, biased and poorly argued; and that it ignored arguments against outsourcing, downplayed proposals for alternatives by Wits “stakeholders”, and twisted evidence to make outsourcing a favourable option. They challenged the basis for UMA’s cost-saving figures. They dismissed claims that outsourcing would benefit workers, pointing out that outsourcing typically leads to weakened unions and reduced wages. And they argued that despite Wits’ professed commitment to transformation, outsourcing would “reproduce the apartheid legacy” at the University.
Council reluctantly agreed to hear a presentation of the academics’ objections in May 2000, but was quite dismissive of their arguments. Ignoring the criticisms contained in the aforementioned report and the protests of students and workers, the Wits authorities went ahead with their plan. Outsourcing was implemented on 30 June 2000.
Six hundred and thirteen workers were retrenched from Wits; perhaps 250 were re-employed at the time by four outsourcing companies.[5] Those who held their jobs faced drastic attacks on wages and conditions: typically, cleaners’ wages dropped from R2 227 per month to about R1 200.[6] Most of these workers lost their pensions and medical aid benefits altogether. Moreover, as Wits employees, the workers’ children had been entitled to free education at this university just like the children of professors; this too was gutted by the retrenchments, slamming the doors of learning and culture in the faces of workers’ families. NEHAWU lost about half of its members on campus; union organising among outsourced workers was seriously weakened.
We cannot here tell the full tale of the ups and downs of outsourced workers’ struggles over the past 11 years – also including the workers at the former Johannesburg College of Education, since it was incorporated into Wits. We do not know what has become of UMA’s cost-saving predictions, although critics have pointed out that financial and organisational problems at Wits remained serious for many years.[7] But it is already clear that outsourcing was a great blow to the affected workers, from which they have still not recovered. This report will show that the “concerned academics” were right about at least one thing: outsourcing has undoubtedly reproduced the apartheid legacy at Wits, and continues to do so to this day.
List of outsourcing companies at Wits
Whilst a full list of all outsourced companies at the University is not readily available, the following is basic overview of the companies contracted by the University and what services each provides to the university.
Cleaning:
Supercare
Impact Cleaning
Carovone.
Landscaping:
Servest (previously Sonke)
Movers:
ABC Movers
Mavika
Residence Catering:
Royal Sechaba Catering
Electricity:
MJL Electrical
Ribach
Plumbing:
Kevin’s Plumbing
Linpro
Sunshine Plumbers
Karoo Plumbers
Wejel Pumbing
Carlyle
Waste removal:
Oricol
Welders:
Gate Mission
Euro Welding
Skill Possibilities
Carpentry and building:
ABC
Painting:
ABC
Hendrick Kingdom
Mathale Contracting
Air-conditioning:
Perfect Air Conditioning
BMS Air conditioning
Lift services:
Allied Elevator
Schindler
United Elevators
Wages
As with the list of outsourcing companies, a full account of the wages, or average wages, earned by workers at the University is difficult to ascertain. Cleaning workers recently went on strike - to no avail - demanding a living wage of R4200 a month. Currently, workers earn an average of around R2000 a month or around R12.51 per hour, before deductions. It is important to note that beyond the primary issue of wages, outsourced workers at the University enjoy few benefits: they have no medical aid, travel allowances, maternity benefits or pensions.
Unionisation
There are a number of different trade unions which operate and have members at the University. The union with the highest membership at the University is the National Services and Allied Workers Union (NASAWU). The Hotel, Liquor, Catering, Commercial and Allied Workers (HOTELICCA) also s a high membership at the University, both NASAWU and HOTELICCA are affiliates of the National Council of Trade Unions (NACTU). Nationally, there are two unions, both affiliates of the COSATU, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) and the National Education and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU). All four of these unions have active members at the University.
II. OVERVIEW OF GRIEVANCES
Practices of the University
1. Blatant racism by Wits managers: the Armitage affair
In April 2010, outsourced workers at Wits University alleged that a senior university official had been racially abusing them, allegedly calling them ‘k****rs’ and threatening to cut of male workers’ genitals. It was expected, given the seriousness of the allegations, that the university management’s response would be swift and uncompromising. These were, after all, allegations of the most serious kind.
Despite the Vice Chancellor promise to get an external investigation, workers did not to receive any urgent response from the university’s management. After repeatedly petitioning management, workers, with the support of students were forced to hold a demonstration before the university’s management agreed to conduct an investigation.
That investigation took place at the end of 2010, and the report was completed sometime at the end of February to early March 2011. But, workers have not been kept informed of the process, despite attempts to acquire information. It was during this period, that staff and students who have been concerned about the continuing and intensifying injustices against outsourced workers joined with workers to form the Wits Workers Solidarity Committee.
Repeated attempts to access information and the report were met with refusals by the university. Demonstrations were held and more memorandums handed over, and eventually, the university released a communication in which they stated they could not release the report on Armitage until his disciplinary hearing was completed. This was confirmation that the university had the report, and something was finally about to be done.
Three days before his hearing, Armitage resigned, and sent a note to the Disciplinary hearing admitting his guilt. To date, the university has been silent on the matter.
The issue of racism affects the entire the university community. Outsourced workers were not kept informed of the process of the investigation. The issues of confidentiality in that process is a matter the university’s management is obliged to negotiate in a way that does not restrict or violate the university community’s right to information. Simply remaining silent is an abdication of that responsibility. And continuing to remain silent after Amitages resignation is an affront to workers who were racially abused by Armitage. This response by Wits University management runs the risk of being complicit in sweeping potential racism at the university under the rug.
2. Ban on workers meeting on campus
Workers at the University of the Witwatersrand are banned from meeting on campus to discuss their grievances. This is due, mostly, to the contractual relationship between Wits management and the outsourcing companies. With the workers being outsourced, management can claim that the workers are not its responsibility, but instead the responsibility of the companies. Thus, the absurd situation arises wherein workers – who work on campus every day – are told that Wits is not their workplace, and that as a result, if they wish to discuss their grievances collectively, they must go to their employers’ offices off campus. In practice this would require Supercare workers to travel to Randburg if they wanted to hold a meeting.
This perpetuates the secondary status of workers at the University community, and constitutes a direct violation of their right “to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and to present petitions” as guaranteed in Chapter 2, section 17 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.
There are numerous cases of attempts to enforce this violation of their rights by the companies that employ them, all with the complicity of Wits management who remain silent on the issue except when they feel the need to support the companies. Workers have, for example, been issued warnings for attending WWSC meetings and rallies. Carovone workers were, for example, warned not to attend a WWSC rally on 6 May 2011, and Sonke workers have been issued verbal warnings for attending meetings.
3. Segregated entrances
Wits Campuses have multiple entrances which allows for ease of access to students and staff. Yet, outsourced workers who work daily at the university are given access to only one entrance to the University. At Main Campus, this entrance is the service entrance on Raikes Street which is notoriously dangerous, and there have been numerous day time muggings. Female workers tend to walk in groups as they are the most vulnerable to such attacks.
Forcing workers to use a single secluded entrance to the university reinforces the segregation of outsourced workers from the rest of the University community. Isolated to an entrance on a side street rarely used by students, means workers are kept from interacting with students, even when entering their workplace. This segregation of entrances, and purposeful segregation from the rest of the University community is not only racist, but it maintains outsourced workers current position as secondary citizens of the University.
4. Segregated spaces inside Wits
(a) Dining rooms and change rooms
Outsourced workers are given allocated spaces on campus to use as their change rooms. These change rooms from part of the basic necessities required for workers on campus. This is a centralised space where outside workers store their belongings and eat. As a result this they spend their limited social time during the day. The dining rooms are where workers are expected to have their meals including tea. Ideally, they should be allowed to use the same kitchen facilities that staff members at the University use. The centralised space controls workers interaction at the University at all times to the extent that social activities such as resting and eating are confined to worker-only spaces, alienated from the rest of the University community.
(b) Toilets
Outsourced workers are not allowed to use the same bathrooms as the rest of the University community uses. They have allocated bathrooms at their change rooms. This violates the dignity of people who are segregated from using basic facilities that should be available to all people. Why is it that the University does not want workers using basic facilities such as bathrooms? Again, workers are kept segregated and do not interact with the rest of the university community. Not allowing people to use basic facilities that a visitor to the University has access to, isolates workers from the workplace and clearly means that they are not welcome at the University. At a more practically level, centralised change rooms places a further unnecessary inconvenience on workers.
(c) Public spaces
Outsourced workers are not allowed to use ‘public/open’ spaces at the university, such as the library lawns. Workers are faced with the situation where they are not allowed to comfortably sit and enjoy their break because they are seen as being the spaces for the ‘client’ (Wits University).
(d) Educational facilities
The primary function of the University is that of education. Outsourced workers work daily at the University, yet they are not given access to the universities libraries and educational facilities. Prior to outsourcing, workers had access to libararies, and their children could study at the university.
Treatment of workers by outsourcing companies
1. Intimidation of workers exercising their constitutional rights.
Workers are constantly faced with intimidation by the companies they work for. To name but a few examples of intimidation
- At a meeting of the Wits Workers Solidarity Committee (WWSC) a manager from Supercare attended the meeting. He was asked to leave the meeting. A few days later, he gave a warning for to the worker who called into question his presence at the meeting.
- Caravone workers were warned not come to the demonstration of the WWSC, when we handed over a memorandum to Wits management on the 6 May 2011
- On the 29 July, Mr Trevor Ackerman, the M.D of Impact Cleaning, met with workers and threatened to fire workers involved with the Workers Solidarity Committee and those who became unionised.
- Supercare cleaning suspended numerous workers after the Cleaning Sector strike that ended on 12 September 2011. All workers who are on the Wits Workers Solidarity Steering Committee were charged and acquitted of all charges. To date, they have not been compensated for the money lost during their two week long suspension.
2. Direct verbal racism by companies.
- On 10 June 2011, a Wits employee, Mr. Ian Armitage resigned after he was charged with racism. Although he resigned before his Disciplinary Hearing could take place, he sent through a letter admitting to racism.
- Sonke workers (before the company changed name to Servest) recently wrote a letter to Servest management after workers were concerned when a supervisors referred to a worker as an ‘illiterate stupid’. The same supervisor threatened workers to go to CCMA, claiming they will not win any case brought against him. This man is no longer an employee, for reasons not related to the case.
3. Appalling conditions – change rooms etc
a) Servest workers
Servest workers change rooms are located behind Sunnyside residence, and in front of Hofmeyer house. Hidden behind trees, are two shacks that have been built for Servest workers. These shacks house workers lockers, as well as the bathrooms. On the side of the shacks, exposed, lies the geyser. The ground is sandy, and there are a few wooden tables where workers eat.
Opposite the shacks, adjacent to Hofmeyer house, a room has been furnished with tiles, and are regularly maintained to house dustbins. At a university which stands for the dignity and justice, how can such an absurd situation take place? Why are rubbish bins are stored in a tiled clean built rooms, and yet human beings who work and keep his university tidy and beautiful, are given a shack to use as change rooms, and dining rooms
b) Supercare workers
Supercare workers have their lockers below the Matrix. In these lockers, workers store their clothing and food. However, the male lockers are located in the bathrooms that have been built for the workers. Hygienically, workers are concerned that their food and clothing are located in bathrooms.
Further, Supercare cleaners have been told that they are no longer allowed to change in the building the clean. They have to change in the lockers located inside the bathrooms.
The dining room that workers have to eat in is small and cramped for the large number of Supercare employees. There are no windows, and the space in uncomfortable and not conducive as a dining facility.
The dining room and kitchen that Supercare workers use have sewage pipes running across the ceiling. After a complaint by workers, management simply built a thin roof so the pipes are not exposed by sight. However, they still smell, and this solution has merely been aesthetic.
III. COMPARISON WITH UCT – memorandum of understanding
Outsourcing and privatising higher education institutions is a global trend, presenting workers across the world with some similar issues and challenges. In South Africa there are even deeper links to be made between workers’ experiences in tertiary education institutions; and thus much to learn from others’ activism, challenges and successes. There has, in particular, been some activity among the students and workers and staff at UCT from which we can learn.
Outsourced in the late 1990s, students and staff workers in the ‘non-core’ service provision held significant campaigns centred on attempts to pressure UCT management to adopt a fair and progressive ‘Code of Conduct.’ This campaign formed part of a refusal by workers, students and staff to accept UCT’s initial claim that the workers’ conditions are the sole responsibility of the outsourced companies; and instead urged UCT to enforce – and even go beyond – the basic requirements of South African labour law on its campus.
Guided by the approach taken by the Ethical Trading Initiative[8]the Code of Conduct (introduced in 2005) covers issues related to the freedom of association and collective bargaining; working conditions; minimum wages; and other conditions. Of particular interest to note are the wage recommendations, which requires UCT to require service providers to pay their employees a minimum wage at least equal to the Supplemented Living Level (SLL). Where service providers do not do this, UCT has agreed to supplement the Minimum Wage. Other important promises made by university management in this code include: worker representatives have full access to the workplace; and workers must have a safe and hygienic environment, including ablution facilities.
Despite the adoption of this code, there have many criticisms and complaints from workers. Firstly, many have claimed that the creation of the code was not consultative or transparent. Workers were not asked about their experiences and thus their particular vulnerabilities are not provided for within the code. Furthermore, oppressive labour practices have continued on the UCT campus despite the existence of the Code of Conduct. Victimisation, harassment and UCT’s inability to act on its commitments have meant that Code of Conduct has not been the solution of outsourced workers’ problems on campus.
But for all its problems, at least some of the items in this code are a step forward compared with Wits. At least management has made some promises, and in principle allows workers to hold it to these promises. The WWSC calls for a similar or stronger code to be implemented at Wits – but developed in full consultation with outsourced workers, and with students and staff of the University.
IV. CONCLUSION, RECOMMENDATIONS, DEMANDS, WAY FORWARD
The report argues for the immediate removal of apartheid segregation in the University. The evidence demonstrated in this report not only attests to the explicit practice of apartheid in our University, but also to how senior management has been very slow, despite countless calls by others within the University community, in positively reacting to the situation. It is Senate’s duty to defend the University’s democratic practices, and to lead it as an institution that embraces, defends and advocated for human rights. The very decision to outsource in the year 2000 was taken and endorsed by this body.
What is clear, following the discussion in this report, is that our University has been practicing business in ways that have offended its own values. The racial discriminations, separate treatment of outsources workers, their humiliation and subjugation as sub-citizens is evidence to the effect that predictions made in the time of outsourcing that it would create conditions for the continuation of apartheid in campus, have come to pass.
The recommendation therefore, is that Senate should effectively call for the end of all apartheid practices in our University, and begin to hold the contractual practices of the University with outsourced all outsourced services and functions through a “Memorandum of Understanding” along the lines of UCT. In essence, the report makes the following recommendations;
· First, in the long term, open investigation into whether outsourcing has indeed benefited the University as argued in its inception with a view to possibly end it
· Secondly, in the short term, the immediate removal of restrictions in terms of the following:
o Access cards
o Access to public space (e.g. Library, toilets, and other facilities)
· Thirdly, the immediate removal of the shacks behind Sunnyside, built for Sonke/Servest workers
· Fourth, the recognition of the right of workers to freedoms of association and expression, with the explicit mention of WWSC
In the end, Senate must ask as to what does it means that these offences have been made against all these black workers in the name of the University. What it does it mean that we have, as an institution, violated human rights, undermined people’s dignity by subjecting them to working conditions such as shacks right in our midst, within the university precinct? These questions have to do with the recent past, whereas the recommendations above have to do with an immediate and long term future. In essence, these are human rights offences, and the University must say what reparation response is appropriate as a concrete demonstration of regret.
[1] The Workers Solidarity Committee is a body of outsourced workers, students and staff (both support and academic) of the University. The aim of the body is to try and address the challenges faced by outsourced workers, some of its steering committee members also sit on the University Senate and other University structures
[2] Meeting held with the Vice Chancellor in the 26 May 2011
[3] J. Pendlebury and L. van der Walt. “Neoliberalism, Bureaucracy and Resistance at Wits University”. In R. Pithouse (ed.) Asinamali: University Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2006. pp.79-92
[4] G. Adler, A. Bezuidenhout, S. Buhlungu, B. Kenny, R. Omar, G. Ruiters, L. van der Walt. “The Wits University Support Services Review: A Critique”. Presented to Wits Council, 22 May 2000.
[6] L. van der Walt, D. Mokoena, S. Shange. “Cleaned Out: Outsourcing at Wits University”. South African Labour Bulletin, 25, 4, August 2001, pp.54-58.
[8]Council of Code Motivation, July 2005, pg.2
