SADNU Media Release 14-06-07 |
SADNU Media Release
SADNU students support strike actionThe National Student Forum (NSF) of the South African Democratic Nurses Union has noted with concern the ugly and repulsive process of Zanufication that our country is currently undergoing. Our government and its ministers are slowly and arrogantly fuelling this process by instituting intimidatory tactics against public servants by arresting and dismissing them.
Student nurses across the country are forever complaining of being turned into workforce in our health services, and the situation has now worsened with the impasse on public service salary negotiations. Should we continue to allow the situation to prevail, we will be giving the government leverage to continue harassing public servants and this defeats the noble cause of fighting for a living wage.
Apart from being used, we are also faced with a serious safety problem at health services where we are supposed to receive experiential learning. In the same breath we wish to welcome the brave and progressive move by managers of Nursing Training Institutions to withdraw students from health services, i.e. Free State and Limpopo. We want to call on all institutions in other provinces to follow suit.
Like the State President, student formations organizing student nurses have for some time been treating the issue with "silent diplomacy". The time has come for us to be more vocal and start mobilizing. We cannot stand back and watch our members become victims of casualisation, voluntarism, and acts of intimidation at workplaces. We thus call on all student nurses in the country to support and intensify the strike action. WE ARE NOT SAYING STUDENTS SHOULD STAY AWAY FROM WORK, that is in provinces that have not yet taken security measures, but the action can be supported in the following manner:
Those students who are still going to work should:
- Not carry out any task that does not fall within their clinical objectives (work to rule).
- Not carry out any task (even if it is within objectives) without supervision of a registered nurse.
- Join lunch-time pickets at workplaces.
Our decision to support the strike action is informed by the fact that all student nurses occupy a dual status of being students and employees, safe in Free State, Western Cape and Northern Cape where student nurses are bursaried. Despite the status quo, all students are the working class of tomorrow and we firmly believe that worker consciousness should be entrenched in them today. As the young working class, we also happen to believe that the demands tabled by labour could not be more reasonable.
We are willing to engage with other student formations in the country to consolidate a national action of all students (not only student nurses) if the impasse is not resolved by the end of next week. This action will be putting pressure on the government to accede to the demands of labour. We will do whatever it takes to protect our country from Zanufication.
Towards a living wage,
Tsidiso Mmusi
NSF Chairperson
Cell: 073 114 5448