An effort to use relief funds earmarked during the Covid-19 pandemic, aimed at saving jobs at the embattled Post Office, has failed, meaning thousands of employees of the collapsed state-owned company again face the chop.

The latest development comes just a week after the company’s business rescue practitioners said they’d reached an agreement with labour unions in an effort to save thousands of jobs.

Last week, business rescue practitioners Anoosh Rooplal and Juanito Damons said the curtailment of retrenchments would apply to unionised Post Office employees and was subject to funding approval by the Unemployment Insurance Fund’s Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (Ters).

“Should the application for the Ters relief be successful, the bargaining unit employees will have 75% of their salaries paid by the Ters relief money (through the Post Office) and 25% paid by the Post Office for the amount of time that Ters agrees, but no longer than 12 months,” Rooplal and Damons said in a statement last week.

But on Wednesday, the plan was already up in smoke. This was after an adjudication committee of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) decided against recommending the granting of the funds.

In a statement, Rooplal said: “We are very disappointed with the unsuccessful application, as we were hopeful that the Ters funding would provide a temporary relief to the bargaining unit staff members, as the funding would have effectively been used to upskill and retrain staff for possible job placements while still earning a salary.”

Rooplal said the department of communications & digital technologies had also offered to assist the employees with finding positions after they’d been retrained.

Conditional

The withdrawal of the termination letters to affected employees was conditional on the success of the Ters application and if not successful, as is the case now, the bargaining unit category of employees would revert to the current position and so be retrenched.

“This retrenchment impacts 4 889 employees of the bargaining unit staff members,” the business rescue practitioners said.

“We tried our very best and acted in good faith, together with the unions, to make a final attempt to apply for Ters relief funding to limit the impact on possible retrenchments and provide a temporary relief for the bargaining unit,” said Rooplal.

Read: Post Office monopoly on small parcels to be reviewed

“We are conscious of the turmoil that this application and subsequent rejection will and has caused the bargaining unit staff members and their families and for that we are deeply sorry.

“Should the application have been successful, we believe that the outcome for the affected employees may have led to a better outcome for them and their families, even if it was only for a short period,” said Rooplal.

Under the rescue plan devised by the business rescue practitioners, some 6 000 of the Post Office’s 11 000 employees would be retrenched. This would reduce annual employee costs to about R1.2-billion.

“The organisation however lacks skills and the leadership, management and technical expertise across the business. This needs to be appropriately strengthened and developed, which is necessary to drive a culture change towards a high-performance organisation,” the practitioners said.

Following litigation by creditors, which included landlords to whom the Post Office owed rent, the troubled state-owned entity was placed into business rescue on 10 July 2023. According to the business rescue plan, the Post Office’s debt amounted to R4.5-billion, with R3.9-billion owed to Postbank and about R400-million owed in rental arrears. – © 2024 NewsCentral Media