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28 February 2019 | Story Lacea Loader
A group of outsourced workers and some students blocked entrances to gates of the University of the Free State (UFS) Bloemfontein Campus this morning. This follows the unprotected strike action by outsourced workers yesterday to demonstrate their demand for immediate insourcing of all jobs at the university.

The protest is ongoing, and the executive management is continuing engagement with the WSF today regarding their proposed demand for insourcing.

All academic and administrative services and activities are continuing as normal today, after some classes were disrupted yesterday and spaces on campus vandalised. The situation on campus is being monitored closely by our Protection Services and members of the university management.

The executive management remains committed to ensuring stability on campus and to the uninterrupted continuation of all academic and administrative services and activities; the executive management is furthermore committed to engage continuously with all its constituencies, including the WSF, in an open, transparent, and honest manner.

All students and staff are encouraged to constantly check the official communication platforms for updated information.

Emergency numbers for the Bloemfontein Campus:
+27 51 401 2911/2634 (24 hours on duty)

Released by:
Lacea Loader (Director: Communication and Marketing)
Telephone: +27 51 401 2584 | +27 83 645 2454
Email: news@ufs.ac.za | loaderl@ufs.ac.za
Fax: +27 51 444 6393


28 February 2019: Outsourced workers at the UFS embark on unprotected strike action
Outsourced workers at the University of the Free State (UFS) withdrew their labour today to demonstrate their demand for immediate insourcing of all jobs at the university. Some students and student organisations exercised their solidarity with this intended action and participated in an unprotected strike on the Bloemfontein Campus.

The unprotected strike action follows the handing over of a memorandum by a group consisting of students and outsourced workers from the Workers & Students Forum (WSF) to the university’s executive management during the Shimla Park Commemoration Prayer Service, which took place on the Bloemfontein Campus on Friday 22 February 2019.

In response to the memorandum demanding insourcing, the executive management indicated the university management’s commitment to engaging with the WSF for the betterment of outsourced workers at the UFS and its community. The response furthermore indicated a request to initiate a formal process of engagement and consultation on the proposed outsourcing. The WSF did not accede to this request and decided to embark on today’s unprotected strike action.

Although academic and administrative services and activities continued as normal today, disruption of some classes occurred on the Bloemfontein Campus. The university’s executive management, together with its Protection Services, is monitoring the situation closely. Students participating in the unprotected strike action have been requested to uphold the right to education of their fellow students and not to participate in the disruption of classes.

Discussions regarding possible insourcing at the UFS commenced in 2016, and in 2017 an agreement was reached on a decent or living wage at the UFS. As a result, the total remuneration package of employees of service providers was increased to R7 000 as from 1 July 2017. It was furthermore agreed that the contracts with the current service providers will be rolled over until 2020. A team representing the UFS Council, the Mutual Forum (comprising NEHAWU and UVPERSU), and the Workers Forum (comprising representatives of employees of service providers at the UFS), participated in the discussions.

Additional to the agreement on a decent living wage at the UFS reached in 2017, the university management also established a service provider and contractor forum and subsequently appointed a compliance officer, who meets on a quarterly basis with representatives of the service providers and contractors to resolve issues on a real-time basis and to ensure that they are dealt with in a fair and amicable way, thus ensuring that our outsourced workers are treated in a manner which is aligned to the values of the UFS.

The executive management remains committed to engage continuously with all its constituencies, including the WSF, in an open, transparent, and honest manner.

Released by:
Lacea Loader (Director: Communication and Marketing)
Telephone: +27 51 401 2584 | +27 83 645 2454
Email: news@ufs.ac.za | loaderl@ufs.ac.za
Fax: +27 51 444 6393

News Archive

Protection of Information bill- opinions from our experts
2011-11-28

Prof. Hussein Solomon
Senior Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of the Free State. 

In recent years, given their failure to effectively govern, the ANC has become increasingly defensive. These defensive traits have become particularly acute in light of the various corruption scandals that members of the ruling party involve themselves in.
 
Given the fact that for now they are assured of an electoral majority (largely on account of their anti-apartheid credentials), coupled with the fact that they have managed to make parliament a rubber stamp of the executive as opposed to holding the executive accountable, it is the media which has increasingly held the ruling party to account by exposing such corruption and incompetence in government.
 
The passing of the information bill, therefore, is not merely an attack on the media, but an attack on the pivotal issue of accountability. Without accountability, there can be no democracy.
 
By defining national interest broadly, by refusing to accept a public interest clause in the bill, the ANC increasingly shows its disdain to South Africa's constitution and its citizens.
 
More importantly, as former Minister of Intelligence and ANC stalwart Ronnie Kasrils pointedly makes clear, the ANC is also betraying its own noble struggle against the odious apartheid regime. It was the media which played a key role in exposing apartheid's excesses, it is the same media which is coming under attack by the heirs of PW Botha's State Security Council - Minister of State Security Siyabong Cwele and his security apparatchiks whose mindsets reflect more Stalin's Gulag's than the values of the Freedom Charter.
 
The passing of this bill is also taking place at a time when journalists have had their phones attacked, where the judiciary has been deliberately undermined and parliament silenced.
 
Democrats beware!

 
Prof. Johann de Wet
Chairperson: Department of Communication Science 
 
The ANC’s insistence on passing the Protection of State Information Bill in its current form and enforcing it by law, means that the essence of our democratic state and the quality of life of every citizen is at stake.
 
Yes, our freedom as academics, researchers, mass media practitioners and citizens comes into play. Freedom implies the right to choose and is, along with equality, an underlying principle which helps make democracy happen. While the South African state needs to protect (classify) information which could threaten its security and/or survival, the omission of a public interest clause in the Bill at this stage effectively denies a citizen the right to freedom of information.
 
 Freedom of information, along with press freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association and religious freedom, are essential to democracy. These freedoms are granted because they conform to basic liberal ideas associated with (Western) democracy and which resonate with South Africa’s liberal constitution, such as (1) belief in the supreme value of the individual (and thus not of the state); (2) belief that the individual has natural rights (rights which belong to all human beings by nature – such as the right to life and to control government)) which exist independently of government, and which ought to be protected by and against government; and (3) recognition of the supreme value of the individual. 
 
One wonders how many cases of South African government corruption and mismanagement would have been uncovered by investigative journalists over the past number of years if this Bill in its current form was on the statute books. This Bill represents a backward step from the promise of democracy of having an informed public. The former National Party government had similar laws in place and one does not want to go there again. The infamous Information Scandal in South Africa of some thirty years ago, or Muldergate as it has come to be known, reminds one of what governments can do when it works clandestinely.
 
What South Africans need, is more information on what government structures are doing and how they are doing it with taxpayers’ money, not less information. While information in itself does not equal communication or dialogue, it is an indispensable part thereof, and the need for dialogue based on verifiable information is urgent for meeting vexed challenges facing South African communities. Academics in all fields of specialisation are constantly in need of untainted information to pursue answers and/or offer solutions to where South Africa should be moving in all spheres of life.

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