Former Post Office workers protest over unpaid retrenchment packages
Former Post Office employees took to the streets of Pretoria on Tuesday, 2 June 2026, picketing outside the communications department’s offices over outstanding pension benefits and severance packages.
According to the frustrated former workers, the state-owned entity had failed to pay out full retrenchment and voluntary severance packages.
Members among the picketing workers claimed that some former workers were still owed upwards of R100,000, depending on their salary level and years of service.
One former employee, Jackie [surname unknown], told Newzroom Afrika that the picketers had rejected an agreement between the Post Office’s business rescue practitioners (BRPs) and labour unions.
She said the alleged agreement would have seen former workers receive only a fraction of the amounts owed to them.
“They agreed with the union that they would pay us only 18 cents on the rand, to which we didn’t agree,” Jackie said. “We want the money they are owing us. We were not part of their agreement.”
MyBroadband asked the Communication Workers Union for further details, but it had not responded by the time of publication.
Post Office business rescue practitioner (BRP) Anoosh Rooplal said all severance packages had been paid in full.
“Retrenchment benefits related to payments have also been paid. There are no outstanding payments due to ex-employees,” he said.
The Post Office was placed in business rescue in July 2023, following years of financial mismanagement and declining use of its services.
That led to a major retrenchment process, through which the BRPs planned to reduce the Post Office’s headcount from around 11,000 employees to 5,000 in its original Business Rescue Plan.
The BRPs, Rooplal and Juanito Damons, initially devised a last-minute plan to avoid extensive job cuts.
The Post Office reached an agreement with labour groups to halt the retrenchments while trying to secure funding from the Department of Labour’s Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme (TERS).
Following discussions with labour unions, the Post Office filed an application with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration (CCMA) to delay the job cuts.
Delaying the inevitable
The CCMA was unconvinced by the South African Post Office’s case and said TERS had been relaunched during the Covid-19 pandemic to provide financial relief to employers.
It added that, in the case of the post office, TERS funding would merely delay the inevitable. As a result, the plan failed, and the BRPs were forced to proceed with job cuts.
Rooplal explained they had approached the CCMA to limit the impact of retrenchments and to provide temporary relief for the bargaining unit.
He believed the plan would likely have led to a better outcome for affected employees and their dependents, even if only temporarily.
The BRPs returned to the CCMA to apply for TERS funding in December 2024. While the outcome of that application was unclear, the Post Office received some relief in May 2025.
In May 2025, TERS agreed to provide the Post Office with six months of income for its staff, totalling R381 million.
Communications and digital technologies portfolio chair Khusela Diko described the support as “a much-needed lifeline” that the state was morally and duty-bound to extend.
“The R381 million wage subsidy for nearly 6,000 employees over a six-month period is an important milestone in the ongoing work to rescue, resuscitate, and future-proof the Post Office,” she said.
She added that the funding would reduce the state-owned entity’s cost burden and formed part of the foundation for completing the business rescue process that began in September 2023.
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