UCT's Deputy Vice-Chancellor responds to the article by Budlender and Lorenzen that criticised UCT's policy for next year on minimum wages.
Francis Petersen
Opinion | 10 December 2014
Farmworkers union Csaawu has launched an online crowd-funding campaign to save it from bankruptcy.
Daneel Knoetze
Brief | 8 December 2014
Josh Budlender and Johan Lorenzen argue that the reasons given by the University of Cape Town (UCT) for the minimum wage of outsourced workers in 2015 do not make sense.
Josh Budlender and Johan Lorenzen
Analysis | 8 December 2014
Nearly 17 years ago, sitting behind a slightly battered desk in Cape Town’s Salt River, Myrtle Witbooi told me that the dream of domestic workers being “treated like other workers” would not die. “We want a living wage and proper hours. It is a dream…but we will get there,” said the woman who, in Cape Town in 1965, convened the first organisational meeting of domestic workers.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 8 December 2014
A Robertson farm worker has laid a charge of assault against his employer after allegedly being “slapped and choked” on Wednesday morning. The attack, he said, was punishment for inviting a farm workers’ union leader onto the property. A case of assault is being investigated by the police.
Kimon de Greef
News | 4 December 2014
Too many employers of domestic workers refuse to comply with the Unemployment Insurance Fund, leaving their employees seriously short changed.
Zintle Swana
News | 3 December 2014
The powerful International Finance Corporation has been sharply rapped over the knuckles in an ombudsman’s report on its US $50 million investment in Lonmin.
Alide Dasnois
News | 3 December 2014
Politically, the biggest potential loser in the ongoing and increasingly bitter fracas within Cosatu and its affiliates is the smallest member of the ANC-led tripartite alliance, the South African Communist Party (SACP). That party’s Medium Term Vision (MTV), described in some party documents as a “ten-year plan” looks close to being in tatters.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 30 November 2014
Wages should be regulated, but minimum wages should be set at levels that do not destroy jobs, write Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass.
Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass
Opinion | 27 November 2014
The increase in minimum wages for domestic workers of R1 an hour is not enough, says Myrtle Witbooi, general secretary of the South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union (SADSAWU).
Thembela Ntongana
News | 26 November 2014
At least 40 Zimbabwean informal traders fear they may lose their livelihoods after delays in getting informal trading permits from Fezeka City Council offices in Gugulethu.
Tariro Washinyira
News | 25 November 2014
Thirteen workers from a farm in Philippi have accused their employer of contract breaches, unfair dismissal and abuse. But farm owner Edgar Meyer denies the allegations, and says that the proper dismissal process was followed.
Thembela Ntongana
News | 24 November 2014
Learning from the mistakes of others, and being aware of the basis of those mistakes, helps us not to repeat the same errors. This is something to which those individuals, groups and unions now agitating to move South Africa onto a new political trajectory via a trade union supported political party would do well to pay heed.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 24 November 2014
Csaawu is facing bankruptcy for supporting farm workers dismissed after the sector’s historic strikes in 2012/13 - arguably the strongest challenge to rural labour exploitation in recent South African history. This is the story of why it is important for the union to be saved.
Daneel Knoetze
Opinion | 17 November 2014
It is no exaggeration to say that South Africa is in the midst of the most important political development since 1994.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 17 November 2014
In 1993, it would have taken the average labourer 40 years to earn what the average executive director of a top company in South Africa earned in a year.
Alide Dasnois
News | 12 November 2014