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The Sunday Independent reports that SA Post Office (Sapo) workers have called on Telecommunications and Postal Services Minister Siyabonga Cwele, to urgently intervene in their wage negotiations deadlock with the post office management.
On Saturday, Aubrey Tshabalala, Communication Workers Union (CWU) general secretary, said they had reached a deadlock in negotiations on Friday after his members rejected Sapo’s 6.5% increase offer.
The unions also want Sapo to identify several staff members, among its workforce, throughout the country, who will be dedicated to assisting social grant recipients with their payments.
Tshabalala said it was necessary to identify those workers after Sapo experienced technical glitches in paying grants to recipients.
“We call on the post office to resolve the matter. In our endeavour not to affect payments, the union chose not to go on a strike action on June 27 and July 2 to allow for smooth payment of social grants to recipients,” Tshabalala said.
He, however, added if Sapo bosses continue dragging their feet on negotiations, social grant payments would be affected.
On Thursday, however, Cwele and Sapo chief executive Mark Barnes expressed their confidence that the wage dispute would be amicably resolved.
They made a commitment to this on the sidelines of a government briefing on progress made to transfer social grant recipients to the new Sassa/ Sapo card.
Tshabalala said wage negotiations began on Thursday and Sapo initially offered a 6% increase from August 1. He added Sapo also offered to increase the working hours of its part-time workers from 21 hours a week to 25.
The union, according to Tshabalala, had demanded that those workers should be converted into permanent staff, saying most of them had been in their jobs for more than three months.
“We could not reach an agreement and postponed the meeting until Friday. Yesterday, the post office management arrived at the negotiations and made a new 6.5% increase offer, backdated to April this year.
“We rejected the new offer. The view of the workers was that they had initially demanded a 12% increase which was later reduced to 8% following protracted negotiations,” Tshabalala added.
He said they wanted Cwele to be part of their negotiations in the future.
“In 2015, Minister Cwele directly addressed workers and told them about the post office’s financial difficulties. As a result of that meeting, the workers agreed on a two-year zero-percent increase. We are now going to our third year. We want Minister Cwele to intervene. He is aware of the workers’ plight,” Tshabalala said.
The original of this report by Baldwin Ndaba appeared on page 2 of The Sunday Independent of 15 July 2018
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