My mother cleaned for half of her life the kindergarden, Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays, two streets from the block of flats where I grew up in, that was in Oberentfelden, Switzerland, not far from the little town Aarau. I vividly remember spending my Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays helping her put up the little chairs onto the little tables so that she could wax the vynl floors while I would wash hand-basins coloured with paint stains from the week that was or sweep the court yard, playground and parking of the acorn leaves of the four huge trees in front of the prefab kindergarden.
That's how my mom earned her bit of money, raising three kids, while my dad was a postman, delivering from 5 am to 2 pm door-to-door in the neighbouring village, only to come home to work in the gardens of our block of flat as outside warden and gardener. There was no shortage of jobs and my dad had permanently three, working 7 days of the week about 14 hours a day. They both had Grade 8; my dad was 'qualified': After the apprenticeship with the Post and a year in the Geneva Post Office to learn French, he became permanent. (I became permanent this month too.) My dad's jobs paid peanuts, and I grew up valuing every coin of money I earned from helping him; there was always enough and I was always ok; who cares if they are 'hand-me-downs'? Most of the kids in my school were like me, working class kids. Who cares that my bike was second-hand? I had a bike! I was well taken care of. And, very unlike a typical working class kid in Switzerland or anywhere else in the world, my big sister, my little brother and I enjoyed many benefits of my parents' labour and determination: Summer holidays in the tent, camping in Caorle and Pippione in Italy; skiing in the Alps, a must, one week, in a hotel every other year; the hotel was owned by the Union of Postal Workers; and hiking trips to the Jura mountains. My dad's treat for the month: taking us out to the Pizzeria. He still loves his Pizza.
I shook Jonathan's hand and said: "Thank you for what you have done today. My mother worked for half of her life as a kindergarden cleaner. Many of the workers on our campus are going home very happy today." He looked back at me, a bit puzzled perhaps, and then told me that the rectorate, and particularly Prof Morgan, had been looking for a way to make the increases possible since May. Now, it has happened. The UFS is supplementing worker salaries to ensure that no worker earns less than R 5000. That's still little; but it is double than some are earning today. It goes a long way. And if all goes well, we will soon see imitators - the madam's paying a decent wage to their maids and gardeners in their private homes, private companies rethinking whether the ration of 500 to 1 between the earnings of a CEO and that of his tealady is ok; parastatals.... SA has the worst Gini-coefficient in the world, I believe, or are we now number 2? Wow. It's a shame either way.
#OutsourcingMustFall - is one of the rallying cries of the joint worker-student movement that has been reinvigorated by the student protests against tuition fees coined #FeesMustFall. A number of universities have committed to ending outsourcing of cleaning, gardening, security and other services, including the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand. Yesterday, the Rectorate of the University of the Free State or "Kovsie" has responded to the memorandum handed over on Tuesday. It announced that as of December 2015, no worker at UFS will earn less than R 5,000 per month, which is well above the minimum wage. Some workers of outsourced services have been earning less than half of this amount! UFS also has for a while now re-instituted the benefit that the children of outsourced workers can study for free at the University. In addition, a joint committee of workers and management will seek to find ways to end outsourcing as soon as possible.
#Proudly Kovsies.
