SA Post Office denies talks of looming retrenchments
The South African Post Office denied talks of planned retrenchments in order to manage labour costs. Picture: Leon Lestrade/African News Agency (ANA) The South African Post Office denied talks of planned retrenchments in order to manage labour costs. Picture: Leon Lestrade/African News Agency (ANA)
Johannesburg - The South African Post Office on Thursday denied talks of planned retrenchments in order to manage labour costs.
“The SA Post Office (SAPO) has not announced plans to retrench employees as part of its current program of reducing labour costs in line with its business turnaround strategy,” said SA post office spokesperson, Johan Kruger.
He added that despite the fact that the percentage labour costs ratio was high, the reports of planned retrenchments were incorrect and the organisation was instead implementing several alternative labour costs containment and reduction measures.
“SAPO has, in consultation with employees and the unions, embarked on a program in which it has offered voluntary severance packages to qualifying employees and 776 applications have been approved,” he said.
“The total severance packages cost is R130m and the annual savings on labour costs through this program is R204m.”
Kruger said SAPO was also investigating other measures of attaining as much flexibility and variability as possible in relation to its labour costs structure, in the utilisation of overtime and the sum of this cost item which currently amount to R42m per annum.