Free education/October6/Oct6 Callout
From 1999 many of South Africa’s public universities began outsourcing the labour of workers on campuses. Thousands of workers who clean university buildings, tend university gardens, cook food in university kitchens, are no longer paid directly by universities, but receive their salaries through private companies contracted by universities to broker and oversee labour on campuses. These companies make substantial profits from acting as ‘middle-men’ in these labour arrangements, profits which are created from driving down workers’ salaries.
When workers lost their direct employment contracts with universities, they not only had their salaries cut by up to 40%, they also lost the benefits they had once received as employees of universities, including the right for their children to attend university for free. They also lost work security. Although workers come to campuses every day to offer work that ensures the smooth running of universities, they have been made into second-class citizens on campuses. High rates of casual work means that jobs are insecure. They cannot petition the university for better working conditions because the university no longer employs them directly. In order for companies to retain their profitable contracts with universities, they have harsh regulations on workers so that university managements are protected from any ‘trouble’ that comes from employing people at tiny salaries with no benefits.
University managements make themselves unaccountable to workers because they argue that workers are no longer their responsibility, they are the responsibility of private companies. But workers spend all of their working days on campuses, traveling vast distances to provide important services to all of us that live and work at universities.
Campus workers are our co-workers and colleagues. They share our daily work space and are an indispensable part of our university communities. Outsourcing undercuts this commonality. It eases the mistreatment of workers and it fails to recognise their presence as vital to campus life.
We demand accountability to workers as integral members of university communities. We demand an end to the outsourcing of workers on campuses in South Africa. We demand that insourcing should be a principled commitment of a decolonised public university.
Join us on October 6 for a national day of action for insourcing on campuses.
Towards a Public African University – Decolonise knowledge, Decolonise institutions, Decolonise labour
- Oct6
- DecoloniseLabour