Mortuary strike to end?

Sigh of relief in sight for grieving Gauteng families as unions, government meet

The strike by Gauteng forensic pathology services workers might come to an end tomorrow.

Provincial department of health officials and five workers’ unions met at the Bargaining Council in Pretoria yesterday where several agreements were reached.

These were expected to be taken to union members before another meeting tomorrow.

“Both parties agreed in principle on many factors and they were all confident that their constituencies will agree with the outcome of the meeting and that the strike could end by Friday,” council general secretary Mpumelelo Sibiya said.

The workers went on strike two weeks ago at Gauteng’s government mortuaries.

Grieving families could not get the bodies of their loved ones for burial as workers refused to do postmortems. They complained about not being paid an allowance for cutting and closing corpses.

However, the department was adamant that dissection under the supervision of a qualified pathologist was part of the workers’ job description. Department spokesman, Khutso Rabothata, said: “We are crossing our fingers that we will come to a conclusion by Friday (tomorrow).”

Suzan Ntlatleng, spokeswoman for the Health and Other Service Personnel Trade Union of SA, said among the offers was the introduction of a monthly danger allowance for qualifying employees.

“The employer has also offered to pay a remedial once-off amount to qualifying officers and other employees who were performing the same function,” said Ntlatleng.