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Hundreds of workers at the government funding scheme have embarked on a massive strike over salary-related demands on the eve of Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba’s announcement on how he’s going to pay for free higher education.
City Press has learnt that employees at the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), which is responsible for allocating and disbursing millions of rands to financial needy students, have shut down offices nationwide in protest against management’s failure to resolve their issues.
The protest is expected to affect the allocation and distribution of funding to beneficiaries of free higher education that was announced by former president Jacob Zuma in December last year.
A total of 280 employees affiliated to the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) want their demands to be met.
Nehawu spokesperson Khaya Xaba said the action started this morning and services at the scheme’s offices at the higher education institutions in the country and its headquarters in Wynberg, Cape Town, had been affected.
“We will continue indefinitely until demands are met. NSFAS has been negotiating in bad faith and they are very intransigent in dealing with our demands. Our strike will affect greatly the allocation of grants and all functions of NSFAS” Xaba said.
Workers demands include:
• A review of the cost-to-company salary structure;
• Cleaners to be elevated to higher pay grades depending on their years of service;
• Contract workers to be made permanent;
• The payment of across-the-board performance bonus;
• Medical aid cover extend to parents of employees; and
• A review of organisational rights agreement to allow representation of workers to extend beyond internal shop stewards, cater for full-time shop stewards and implementation of agency fee to non-unionised workers.
On Wednesday last week, Nehawu indicated that they would be embarking on a strike action after negotiations with NSFAS failed at the bargaining council in October last year.
The union at the time indicated that it initially submitted their demands to NSFAS at another bargaining council in September last year.
The union also indicated that their calls to meet with management had failed.
Their failed efforts resulted in them declaring a dispute with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.
NSFAS chief executive Steven Zwane said management was locked in negotiations with the union’s representatives on Monday to agree on a plan to resolve the employee related matters raised.
Zwane said although discussions were still proceeding through the bargaining council, some matters remain on the agenda and mixed progress has been made.
He said these included Nehawu’s reluctance to participate in the performance management system, remuneration structure with a demand for the review of cost to company and other benefits, job evaluation dispute matters, recognition agreement and general human resources policies.
“Management is committed to working within the Bargaining Council, however, it must be noted that NSFAS, as a public entity, is aligned to the terms and conditions of public service remuneration structure where our employees qualify for a guaranteed remuneration that includes basic salary (notch), which includes: a housing allowance; the value of the structured 13th cheque; the annual service bonus; medical aid; and the contribution to the pension fund.”
“As management, we believe that we are still on track with our negotiations and progress made and already agreed to most of the individual demands in principle. We remain committed to the initial agreement with the union to meet on Thursday to discuss the outstanding items in order to solicit their commitment before submission can be made to the board for consideration.
“We assure that we are working with Nehawu and the NSFAS board to address the issues speedily to ensure that colleagues are back at work, serving the South African public in the implementation of the new fee-free education policy,” Zwane said.
He said normal operations were affected at NSFAS and that management had “as far possible made some arrangements to attend to critical operational matters during this time”.
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