SADTU Update, February 2016 Speaker's Notes and Booklet for the 2016 Education Workers' Forums Full Contents (present section in bold): Introduction Pseudo Movements Defending Collective Bargaining The Privatisation of Education Migration of TVET Lectures in terms of the Public Service Act Government Employees' Medical Scheme (GEMS) Government Employee Housing Scheme (GEHS) 2016 Retirement and Tax Reforms Record of NEC Decisions on MTT recommendations Conclusion Defending Collective Bargaining Collective Bargaining is continuing to be under a constant attack, with concerted efforts to weaken it until it does not exist anymore. The attacks on Centralized Collective Bargaining are manifesting themselves in many different forms, which requires a high level of vigilance and labour unity. We are observing the growing trends of agentisation (Creation of Agencies within the Public Service) and outsourcing of services normally rendered by the Public Service. This is another form of privatization, thereby commodifiying services that would have under normal circumstances been rendered by the Public Service. We are seeing the State that is gradually succumbing to the pressures of monopoly capital which has always held the view that our Public Service is bloated. These attempts by the state to privatise and or agentise services, are influenced by such a notion of a bloated Public Service. What are the implications of this agentisation? . Reduction of the number of Public Service Workers - Agencies outside the Public Service are created by cutting out a portion of the Public Service and its functions, to be performed by such Agencies. Such personnel and their functions will not be replaced in the Public Service. . Decentralizing Collective Bargaining - Agencies do not conform to a principle of Collective bargaining, in that conditions of service of its employees shall be determined by the Minister and not through Collective Bargaining. Such employees who were previous in the Public Service will no longer form part of the PSCBC and all other Sectoral Bargaining Councils such as ELRC, SSSBC, GPHDSBC and GPSSBC. . Fragmented Trade Unions - The unity and cohesion of Public Service Unions is threatened. Unions will not be able to use their collective power as they will be organising in many separate entities. If we're not vigilant enough, we shall find ourselves left with a skeletal Public Service, with all functions taken to the Agencies. This is a way of weakening us as the Public Service Unions. Besides the General Public Service, we cannot go unscathed as Education Sector. We saw in the recent past how the debate on declaring Education an Essential Service was introduced into the public arena without engaging us as the major stakeholder in Education. We insisted that declaring education an essential service would be extremely short sighted and deny us the opportunity as a country to address the core problems in our education system. The suggestion that teacher strikes were at the root of our undesirable education outcomes was misleading and symptomatic of a leadership that was oblivious to the real challenges in the sector. We engaged at the highest level of the movement, advanced sound and legitimate legal arguments and made our views public knowledge and have since nullified the arguments from those who wanted to see education being declared an essential service. Communist University Course Downloads: <http://studycircle.wikispaces.com/Communist+University> Communist University button.jpg E-mail forums (click): Communist University <https://groups.google.com/group/communist-university> ; YCLSA <https://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum> ; CU-Africa <https://groups.google.com/group/CUAfrica> ; SADTU <https://groups.google.com/group/sadtu-political-education-forum> Moderator: [email protected] -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
