Teachers to picket hospitals

2007-06-04 21:19

Cape Town - Teachers are planning to picket outside Cape Town hospitals from Tuesday, says the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) through Western Cape secretary Jonavon Rustin.

This followed union claims that health workers were being intimidated by police, and condemnation of a government ultimatum to health workers to go back to their jobs.

Rustin told a mass union report-back meeting in Cape Town: "We cannot allow that our nurses, our health workers, are harassed at the picket lines, so, as a public-service union, let's not picket at our schools tomorrow; let's go picket at Groote Schuur, Tygerberg.

"Let's pledge that we will go out and support those workers at their picket lines."

Main hospitals the target

His call was met with cheers from the thousands of strikers, many of them teachers, who filled Cape Town's Good Hope Centre.

He confirmed afterwards that the teachers would be picketing on Tuesday at Tygerberg, Groote Schuur and GF Jooste hospitals, and at Vanguard Community Centre, a primary health clinic.

Rustin said there were "talks going round" on why unions should be bargaining with the state when it was being "oppressive" towards the health sector by serving interdicts on picket lines and teargassing their members.

Provincial secretary of the Democratic Nurses' Organisation of SA (Denosa) Bongani Lose welcomed what he described as the "very generous" offer by teachers to join health picket lines.

"On behalf of all the health care workers we accept," he said.

Back-to-work ultimatum "unprofessional"

Lose condemned as propaganda reports that Denosa had broken from the position adopted by the other unions.

Denosa's strategy had not changed and what happened with stay-aways on Friday would happen again 10 times over, said Lose.

Munroe Mkhalipi, the Western Cape Congress of SA Trade Union (Cosatu) chairperson, told the meeting the back-to-work ultimatum had been unprofessional and provoked tension.

"We are not on strike because we like striking. We are striking because it is a last resort when all else fails," he said.

National Education Health and Allied Workers Union provincial secretary Suraya Jawoodeen said that on Monday morning before workers joined picket lines, police were there already.

"The police did not stop us overthrowing apartheid; the police are not going to stop any public-service worker from striking," she said.

Jawoodeen said her union's message to government was "you dismiss one public-service worker, you dismiss us all".

Situation "back to normal"

The provincial health department said earlier the situation at hospitals and clinics across the Western Cape was "basically back to normal".

Departmental spokesperson Faiza Steyn said staff picketing outside GF Jooste and Lentegeur hospitals on the Cape Flats had started working again after being served with copies of an ultimatum to return to work by 10:00.

The ultimatum was issued by the national health department after an interdict was obtained last week by Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.

Essential services barred from striking

The interdict barred essential-service workers from striking.

Steyn said it had been reported that the Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA had been encouraging medical staff to return to work at GF Jooste.

At Tygerberg Hospital, where police last week lobbed stun grenades at protesters barring the entrance, the situation was quiet, and the hospital was functioning normally.

Groote Schuur Hospital spokesperson Leigh Pollio said "about 20 or 30" strikers gathered on Monday morning outside the staff entrance, but did not prevent others from reporting for duty.

She said that, overall, the hospital was "running as normal".

- SAPA