After Mass Action Threatened, Post Office Strike Fizzles

The new head of the SA Post Office, Mark Barnes, must be smiling today. A strike that could have crippled the already embattled state agency that he has been trying to make viable could not even muster a few hundred supporters.

“It’s great news and to be honest it’s a victory for common sense. It’s a victory for all of the people of the Post Office,” Barnes was quoted as saying in the press on Friday.

The Communication Workers Union had proposed a countrywide strike for higher wages, among other things, to last Thursday and Friday, and a march of CWU members to ANC headquarters to demand a bail out for SAPO drew several hundred people. However, SAPO apparently reported Friday that only 400 of its 22,000 workers had taken part in the strike.

SAPO stated on its Facebook page on Thursday that less than 1 percent of workers were absent from work as a result of the action.

On Friday, SAPO released a statement saying, “SA Post Office and CWU reach an agreement to resolve outstanding labour issues. The SA Post Office and CWU met to discuss the current situation in SAPO and have agreed on a process to resolve the outstanding labour issues.

“Both parties will continue with engagements with a projected timeline of one month. In the meantime, CWU will suspend its industrial action and will provide detailed reports to its members during feedback sessions next week.”

Barnes, who took over the Post Office in January, has been trying to get the agency out of its crippling debt, and he had urged workers not to strike so early in the transformation process at SAPO, saying the results could be fatal for the agency. The Post Office has asked for a bail out of R3.4 billion, and has so far been promised R650 million.