School principals must be declared an essential service

Issued by Ian Ollis MP – DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education
21 Sep 2017 in News

Please find the attached Essential Service in Education discussion document.

Strikes by teachers and other employees in the education sector have compromised our children’s constitutionally enshrined right to safety, health and even education. Learners are too often the casualties of this strike action, which sometimes becomes violent.

It is a fact that learners in South Africa have lost more days to strikes than the other 14 countries participating in the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) III study.

While the DA supports the right of individuals to protest, it must not be at the expense of the safety, health and other rights of children.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has determined that it is reasonable to limit the right of certain education sector employees to strike and the DA agrees that this limitation is needed given that our children are forced to suffer as a result of strike action by educator sector employees.

According to the ILO, there are two instances in which the right to strike might be restricted. The right to strike may be restricted or prohibited:

(1)   in the public service only for public servants exercising authority in the name of the State; or

(2)   in essential services in the strict sense of the term (that is, services the interruption of which would endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population).

South Africa is a member state of the ILO and a signatory to the organisation’s relevant conventions in labour law. As a member, we cannot act contrary to the spirit and letter of these decisions and principles.

To this end, the DA will meet with the Essential Services Committee on 9 October to request that they conduct a study on the posts of principals being considered essential services as they are empowered by the Labour Relations Act to make this a reality.

A pertinent example of the rights of certain categories of employees can found in the health sector. Nursing staff are freely able to strike with the exception of a crucial subset – the nursing staff of Intensive Care Units (ICUs). In this instance, only a small percentage of nurse’s work in our country’s ICUs, therefore when other nurses go on strike, they do so on behalf of the essential service nurses that are desperately needed to perform life-saving nursing roles.

Therefore, the DA proposes that the following categories of education staff be declared as essential services:

  1. Principals and deputy principals;
  2. Cleaning staff; and
  3. Staff employed in the provision of food to school pupils.

South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) members often enter schools illegally and harass pupils during their protests when there are no principals present and this needs to be put to an end.

Children’s rights should be prioritised when labour negotiations and strikes take place in the education sector. However, learners are often placed in dangerous situations as well as being denied their right to education whenever they are neglected during a strike or labour negotiations.

Staff members who supply food to children and clean school premises are vital in maintaining their health and wellbeing and the limiting of the right to strike should, therefore, be extended to them as well.

It is vital that principals and support staff at schools are declared an essential service as this will result in children being protected from the adverse effects of protest action.

It is simply unacceptable for schools to be under-resourced due to protests or trade union meetings which are at times held during school hours. It is unfair on learners as they are essentially under the care and supervision of principals for their duration at school.

We can no longer accept this betrayal of learners by the very people who are tasked with providing education and support services which enable a safe and constructive learning environment – without ensuring they have bright futures. Sadtu has shown that it does not care whether its members infringe upon the rights of learners.

Our children have been robbed of the right to learn in a safe environment and the DA will do everything in its power to turn this situation around. Declaring specific categories of education employees as essential services is the first step to ensure that our children are able to realise their full potential and are able to build a better future.