Five things you need to know about Post Office workers’ protest

Former South African Post Office employees are demanding payment of their outstanding pensions, benefits and other monies they say remain unpaid years after retrenchment and voluntary severance package (VSP) processes.

Here are five key things you need to know about the dispute:

• According to workers’ representative Style Khoza, 4,600 Post Office employees lost their jobs through retrenchment and VSP processes between 2020 and 2024.
• Affected workers claim they have not received the full pensions, benefits and other payments promised to them when they left the Post Office. Some say they have been waiting more than three-and-a-half years for the outstanding amounts to be paid.
• The workers are demanding answers over pension deductions, claiming that money deducted from their salaries was not paid over to the relevant institutions, affecting access to pension and related benefits.
• Workers who accepted VSP agreements say they were assured that outstanding payments would be settled by 2024 and that they would be considered for future employment opportunities within the Post Office or through outsourced projects.
• Business rescue practitioners revealed in March that the Post Office needs R3,8bn to finish the rescue process, suggesting liquidation would be the only way if the government failed to inject money into it.

Sowetan