The main issue is a small wage increase - but the struggle is significant in
many ways beyond this point. First, the strike comes against the background
of a wave of casualisation and outsourcing. Universities provide one
example, with around 5000 menial jobs outsourced in the decade after 1994,
part of a drive to commercialize and corporatise higher education. Second,
it is a revolt by workers who organise under the most difficult conditions -
many are insecure and desperate, and have been ignored by many unions. Many
people, including anarchists, have been involved in the struggle to defend
the cleaners: some background can be found at  http://resistwits.tripod.com/.

Right now, a Wits Workers Support Group has been established at Wits
University to support the strikers. E-mail  lewinsk@social.wits.ac.za to get
in touch, send messages of support etc.

-----------------

Workers demand employers clean up their act
Hila Bouzaglou and Sapa | Johannesburg, South Africa
Mail and Guardian online 01 August 2006 03:10
 http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleId=279434&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__business/

Zodwa Phiri witnesses young South Africans being educated every day. But
Zodwa may never witness the education of her own children. This is because,
as a cleaner for the University of Johannesburg, Zodwa earns R8,57 an hour
and a meagre R1 300 a month.

It's for this reason that Phiri, along with hundreds of other cleaners as
well as workers' unions, gathered at the Library Gardens in central
Johannesburg on Tuesday to chant songs and demand higher pay.

Johannesburg cleaners asked their employers (companies such as Supercare,
Isikhonyane and Global Cleaning) for a R1,20 increase in their hourly pay.
Cleaners in rural areas are earning just R6,87 an hour, which means a
minimum salary of less than R600 a month.

According to Dolly Mlotshwa of the South African Transport and Allied
Workers' Union (Satawu), until that salary increase is granted, about 8 000
cleaners will continue to "stay away" from work.

Paul Roux, spokesperson for the National Contract Cleaners' Association
(NCCA), said that it had a good working relationship with the 16 unions
involved and that after 10 days of negotiations they had reached deadlock.

He said that it had offered the cleaners a 6% increase in their wages. This
means 50c more for every hour.

But until the demand for the extra R1 per hour is met, cleaners will
continue to strike.

"We are going to strike until they pay us. We want a lot of money because
when we are sick we don't have money to go to the doctor and we have
children. It is impossible to live," said Lucky Mazibuko (40), a cleaner
working for Global Cleaners.

Supercare Cleaning and Hygiene Services is South Africa's second-largest
cleaning company and has an annual turnover of R450-million.

Chief executive of Supercare Philip Kruger said that the matter is in the
hands of the NCCA and workers' unions.

Supercare employee Mokwena Simon (42), a cleaner at the Carlton Centre, said
that because the cleaning industry is the most important sector in business,
they should be getting paid more.

"If someone is working in unhygienic conditions, that person is in danger. I
put my 100% effort that everyone is living in hygienic conditions ... my
message to my employer is that I need a living wage."

Another Supercare employee, Handsome Mokwena, said that most of the cleaners
had never gone to school and because of this, their employer took advantage
of them.

"When we ask for money, they say we are not educated. But we are working. We
are using our hands," he said.

Some staff at the University of the Witwatersrand pay money out of their own
pockets to Wits cleaners to supplement their meagre wages.

The protests in Johannesburg and Pretoria ended peacefully on Tuesday,
Satawu said.

The unions are due to meet the employers again on Monday and Mlotshwa said
the strike will continue until then.