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To: University of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch University

#BringBackTheWorkers 300+ Black Workers Fired at UWC and Stellenbosch

‘Student wars are labour wars, labour wars are land wars’
This is a petition by Fees Must Fall Western Cape calling for the immediate reinstatement of the dismissed outsourced 150 workers of Stellenbosch University and the 188 workers of the University of the Western Cape.

Why is this important?

150 Stellenbosch University workers were dismissed at the end 2015 after demonstrations at that university calling for the insourcing of all workers under the #EndOutSourcing banner. 88 of the 150 dismissed workers were contracted by G4S Secure Solutions.
Most of the dismissed workers had been involved in landscaping and as private security staff. Following that the university placed a moratorium on outsourcing. During the Stellenbosch shack demonstrations, in an attempt to justify its inaction in resolving the matter, the university cited that it was not within its legal parameters to intervene in the matter as it was an issue between the outsourcing company and the workers, this is despite the fact that these workers contributed to the daily running of the university and logically it would be in the best interests of the university to resolve the matter amicably, this is truly astounding logic for a university that prides itself in academic excellence yet fails to exercise even the most basic intellecual exercise of logical thinking, but to expect logic and sense from the bastion of Afrikaner Nationalism would be to burden ourselves with false hope!
In addition to the dismissal of the Stellenbosch Workers, 188 UWC outsourced workers contracted to the security services company, Securitas, have been dismissed.
Since students of UWC waged the fight for free decolonized education and an end to outsourcing, service providers and University Managements have sought to suppress the movement by taking protesting workers to Labour courts with allegations of absconding from work. Initially, the workers had successfully won the case. Their legal team presented the undisputed truth that workers did not abscond from work but in fact stayed away because the campus was on shutdown due to reason being that the UWC refused to engage students in an honest and genuine manner.
Securitas, the service provider, soon after the Court ruling embarked on a bias and illegal internal hearing chaired by a person(s) favourable to them. In this bogus hearing, charges were mischievously replaced from the originally defeated in court claims which alleged absconding to manufactured charges now of hostage.
On Friday of the 13th January 2017 over 180 workers were found guilty of this false charge and were immediately dismissed.
Most of the workers dismissed are bread winners to largely poor families. They have children to feed, buy uniform and schools stationary. This dismissal means that our black parents might see their children being expelled from schools due to being unable to afford registration fees.
The University of the Western Cape under the leadership of Tyrone is anti-black and they have declared a war against all the black bodies which do not subscribe to their mediocre and dictatorship leading style which advances capitalist agenda.
The Fees Must Fall Western Cape movement stands firm against all forms of victimisation and extends its warning to the University of the Western and the University of Stellenbosch that failure to re-instate unfairly dismissed workers will result in aggravated protests that will hinder the full functioning of both Universities. It simply cannot be that over 300 black families are displaced outside of the economy by frivolous and maliciously applied labour laws by University bureacrats in tandem with private companies. We therefore call upon all those who stand in solidarity with the student-worker aliance to put their signature in support of the reinstatement of our parents.
'We are all connected. When one arm or foot is poisoned, the whole body becomes infected.' -Suzy Kassem

#BringBackTheWorkers

South Africa

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Updates

2017-02-03 04:00:34 +0200

100 signatures reached

2017-02-02 16:42:49 +0200

50 signatures reached

2017-02-02 15:34:39 +0200

25 signatures reached

2017-02-02 14:53:59 +0200

10 signatures reached