TRADE Union Solidarity yesterday reached an out-of-court agreement with the South Africa Post Office (Sapo) after it failed to pay more than R600m into employees’ medical funds.
At the Johannesburg Labour Court yesterday, Solidarity and the Post Office reached an agreement that the state entity would make minimum contributions towards the medical coverage of all workers counted up to about 15 000, though Solidarity represents a fraction of those.
Solidarity’s bone of contention leading to the court matter was that deductions such as contributions to medical funds still appeared on the salary slips of the employees but the Post Office had failed to pay the contributions on behalf of its employees to the various funds.
“The damage that Sapo is causing by this failure is unacceptable,” said Anton van der Bijl, the head of legal affairs at Solidarity.
“This mismanagement means that thousands of innocent workers may lose their medical cover and will thus not be able to receive the medical care they need. Many employees suffer from chronic medical conditions and are dependent on these funds.
“If the Post Office does not meet its obligations, these people will not receive their medication in October. We cannot allow our members to suffer due to the state’s mismanagement, and we have resorted to the court on an urgent basis to force Sapo to fulfil its statutory obligations,” said Van der Bijl.
According to Solidarity, it would not have been possible for these employees to receive any further benefits from Medipos as from Friday due to the fact that premiums were in arrears.
However, Solidarity, Sapoand Medipos managed to reach a settlement in terms of which Sapo must make certain minimum monthly payments to Medipos. In exchange for the minimum payments Medipos has undertaken to sustain the employees’ medical cover provided that the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) approves the settlement of agreement.
The agreement further stipulates that if the CMS does not grant its permission for the implementation of the agreement the court application would again be placed on the Labour Court roll at the end of November to be heard. Meanwhile, no medical claims from any Sapo employees who are Medipos members would be refused as from Friday.
Speaking to Business Report yesterday, Solidarity's spokesperson, Morné Malan, said the court had allowed for an out-of-court settlement between the parties, which was then incorporated as the decision of the court.
“The main thing was to make sure that employees have medical coverage from the beginning of October along with all commensurate medical benefits,” Malan said.
Malan said other matters pertaining to salaries and disputes that unions had with the Post Office would still come before the courts, but that the sigh of relief over yesterday’s ruling was audible.
“At least the can was not kicked down the road on this matter. It was better to reach a settlement on mutual terms than to have the court make an independent ruling. There are still issues to be addressed before court but this one has been settled,” Malan said.
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