VIDEO: UJ cleaners protest en masse
AUCKLAND PARK – Cleaners make their voices heard at the University of Johannesburg.
About 800 UJ cleaners are protesting about outsourcing at the University of Johannesburg Kingsway campus. Singing loudly in unison, the cleaners said that they are over-worked and under-paid. “I had to take Elite Cleaning Services to the unions because they kept docking my pay illegally,” one cleaner said.
The cleaners also said that they were not told that Elite was sold and now they had to work for a company they did not know. They said that their salaries were capped at R2 500 per month and they had to work weekends just to earn an extra R100. The cleaners added that they were not able to survive on the little money they were paid and were demanding to be in-sourced to the university in order for them to receive better benefits.
Some of the cleaners had children in university and said that they lived off loan sharks. They added that they had been met with silence after their memorandum was accepted by the university. “They don’t tell us anything and two people do the work equivalent to seven people,” another cleaner said.
Members of the police watched over the protest. The workers are from all four UJ campuses – Doornfontein, Kingsway, Bunting Road and Soweto. They said they will not stop protesting until they received the answers they were seeking.
On the evening of 2 November, two students were allegedly attacked by security guards at the university.
More details to follow.
