Post office strike ends

THE three-month SA Post Office (Sapo) strike that saw delivery trucks being pelted with stones and workers locked up for hours by their striking colleagues has come to an end.

Workers had demanded the enactment of a 2005 agreement entered into with Sapo, which was aimed at ensuring that workers contracted by labour brokers got permanent positions.

Communication Workers Union spokesman, Matankana Mothapo, had said also that workers wanted Sapo to dismiss Pieter Swart, senior general manager in the mail delivery unit, and group chief executive for mail business Janras Kotsi with immediate effect.

Reasons given were that the two men were responsible for sabotaging the 2005 agreement which outlined processes of doing away with labour brokers within Sapo.

Asked if the agreement between the parties had resolved the labour brokering issue, Kotsi could only say that they had “agreed on an interim solution”.

“Maybe we will be in a position to share what those interim solutions are towards the end of the week,” he said.

He said workers returned to work and efforts were being made to deliver mail that had been piling up over the past weeks.

Sapo did not foresee any legal action from angry clients as “all registered mail was delivered during the strike”, but Kotsi said those who suffered losses would be compensated should it be found that their businesses were affected in any way.

Mothapo could not be reached for comment on the end to a strike that saw workers at the Witspos Mailing Centre in Ormonde being locked up for hours by their striking colleagues on April 25, and branded Sapo vans being pelted with stones in Braamfontein on May 16.