PARLIAMENT, November 9 (ANA) – All support services at Parliament came to a halt on Monday as the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) began a stoppage they said would continue until the legislature heeded their demands for better working conditions and an end to outsourcing.
“Committee secretaries, support staff. researchers, caterers and protection services, none of them are working, they are all on strike,” said the head of the trade union’s parliamentary branch, Sthembiso Thembe.
“We are going to continue until all our demands are met.”
Thembe said these were a general improvement to working conditions, honouring undertakings on bonuses and pension fund improvements, and stopping the practice of outsourcing services.
He said Parliament had reneged on an agreement in March to address complaints on the pension fund system.
“When our people retire, they get a pension of R100,000 or R200,000 and that cannot be.”
He said Nehawu believed that those workers who performed tasks, notably catering, that Parliament had outsourced, were still worse off than its members who were fully employed by the institution and, as students protesters had demanded regarding outsourcing at universities, the practice had to stop.
There are 970 Nehawu members employed at Parliament, which made this branch the biggest in the Western Cape.
There have been regular protests from the union at the legislature, but Monday’s action went further than those earlier in the year. – African News Agency (ANA)
