Strike No 6 is in the post

The SA Post Office could be hit with another strike after it failed to reach an agreement with the Communication Workers Union.

The union said it has already secured a certificate to strike and was now consulting its members for final mandate.

"We received the certificate on [Wednesday last week]," said Clyde Mervin, the union's president.

"We are busy consulting members around the country. We are still waiting for [their comments] but the strike is now imminent. By Monday [next week] we will be in a better position to say we are going on strike or not."

The post office has had five strikes since 2011.

In August last year its workers went on strike demanding implementation of the flexible labour strategy.

The strategy would convert 7945 workers into permanent employees.

They also demanded a 15% wage increase but eventually settled for 6.5%.

The Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services Siyabonga Cwele appointed a technical task team to stabilise the entity.

This followed the resignation of the company's non-executive directors.

The union suspended its strike in November but warned that industrial action could resume again this year if the issue of the agreement, which it disputed, was not resolved.

Since the beginning of the year some of the post office's branches, mostly in shopping malls, were said to be closing down.

The company failed to pay rent to keep some of the branches running.

In January, the company tabled its last year's annual report in parliament, almost four months later, due to management and labour issues that have dogged it for a number of years.

The post office recorded a net loss of R358-million for the year ended March 31 2013, almost a 6.5% increase on the loss of R337-million in the previous year.

The loss was caused by lower-than-expected revenues as consumers found other means of distribution.

The loss was also aggravated by lack of government funding for the post office's universal service obligations, and an unprotected labour strike that ended in November last year.