Around 90% of workers at the South African Post Office could go on a two-day strike next week, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) has warned.
Post Office employees have not received salary increases for two years, the head of the CWU, Clyde Mervin, said by phone.
Subsequently, the CWU is planning a strike for 5 to 6 May to demand higher annual pay rises for Post Office staff and the conversion of casual workers to permanent employees, said Mervin.
The planned strike comes despite the Post Office being cash-strapped as it reported a R1,5bn loss for the 2015 period. The company employs around 22 000 staff.
“For two years no increase — so workers have been saying enough is enough,” Mervin said.
“Casual workers have been working for 20 years with no permanent employment — when are we getting these things right?
“We have marched to government, we have marched to the ANC, we have marched to the post offices and we are saying we are going back to the streets, purely because government officials have received increases consistently,” said Mervin.
Post Office is undergoing a turnaround phase as government moved late last year to hire former banker Mark Barnes as CEO.
Barnes told parliament earlier this year that the Post Office could be profitable again by 2018.
Despite the company being in the early stages of its turnaround phase, the CWU said it’s still going ahead with its planned strike to hit out at previous maladministration and corruption.
Public protector Thuli Madonsela in February found that the Post Office’s acquisition of a R161m, 10-year lease in 2010 of an office building in Centurion, Gauteng was “tainted by procurement irregularities and corruption”.
“Management were totally corrupt as far as we were concerned and obviously we are still waiting for the SIU (Special Investigations Unit) report to clarify other issues,” Mervin said.
Government earlier this year gave the Post Office a R650m bailout, but Mervin said this too little.
Mervin also hit out at Barnes.
“We met with Barnes last week. Barnes has got total (sic) no respect for unions. The way he spoke to us; the way he treated us — it’s like we are nothing to him,” said Mervin.
“We are going to give him time to fix the Post Office but he must change his attitude towards workers and towards the union leaders,” Mervin added.
Meanwhile, Post Office CEO Mark Barnes said the CWU’s announcement of the strike has come as a surprise.
“We haven’t even got notification of the strike yet. I think at this stage it’s positioning,” Barnes said by phone.
Barnes said the Post Office is in the final stages of raising capital from the likes of banks to fund its turnaround, and that a strike is not “in the best interest of the workers”.
“If you upset this apple cart now, it might be the last time you upset it,” said Barnes. “If we give them (funders) any reason to go away, they will.”
Barnes said he hopes to avert the strike. If the strike goes ahead, he said he also wouldn’t turn to the courts to try and interdict it.
“I need to demonstrate responsible forward-looking behaviour and move away from conflict towards negotiation, settlement, common-purpose,” he said.
