SA Post Office and trade unions reach agreement

The SA Post Office and its recognised trade unions Communication Workers Union (CWU), the Democratic Postal Workers Union (Depacu), and the SA Postal Workers Union (Sapwu) yesterday reached agreement regarding salary increases and other substantive issues. 

This brings an end to the strike which started on July 3, 2018.

In terms of the agreement, Post Office employees across the board will receive a salary increase of 6.5%, backdated to April 1 2018. Furthermore, the contracted working hours for permanent part time employees, have been moved from 21.5 hours per week to 27.5 hours per week. Of these positions, some 500 have been earmarked to be phased in as permanent full-time positions. 

Accumulated mail is expected to take roughly 20 work days to be processed, in other words, a full month.

The Post Office also used the opportunity to stress that it appreciates the importance of the Sassa project and will work closely with its employees to ensure the livelihoods of the most vulnerable are not put under unnecessary strain. It has migrated 2.2 million Sassa beneficiaries to the new Sassa/Sapo issued gold card.

“We want to assure all beneficiaries that the IT challenges that impacted last month’s payment run have been resolved,” says Post Office CEO Mark Barnes.