I read an article about the Communications Workers Union (CWU) threatening to strike yet again. A court subsequently issued an interdict against any wild-cat strike action. The CWU Gauteng chairperson, Velaphi Zulu, then stated that the union had no intention of obeying the court interdict.

That statement, to my mind, really sums up the situation. The CWU represents Post Office workers. With his statement, Zulu indicated clearly that the workers had no intention of obeying the law.

When the Post Office workers went on strike for an extended period a while ago, they clearly indicated two things: that they did not care in the slightest about their customers and how much damage they might do to their businesses; the other was that the leaders of the CWU seem to have little to zero under- standing of how an economic system works.

The union leaders also showed that they did not really care about the welfare of their members. If they did, they would do a great deal of research into the potential outcomes of actions which they might take. If they worried about their members, their families, their retirement, their job security, and so on, they would have moved very carefully. They did not.

It is as clear as night follows day that the extended Post Office strike would affect customers of the Post Office itself. Equally clear was that there would be long-term consequences. Could the leaders of the CWU not see that? Are they so uneducated about economic systems that they cannot carry out the most basic of cause-and-effect studies.

In the same newspaper where I read about the CWU stating its intention to ignore the orders of a judge was a Post Office advertisement unrelated to the CWU. The Post Office advertisement featured the slogan ‘We deliver, whatever it takes’. Well, the simple truth is that it does not. The CWU’s actions during the long Post Office strike made sure that the slogan is a joke.

So, anybody with half a brain could work out a likely consequence. When the Post Office does not deliver at all, no matter what it takes to talk sense into the CWU, then companies stop using the services of the Post Office. They go to other providers of such services. A flood of users of the Post Office went elsewhere, where they intend to stay.

So, the CWU has damaged the Post Office permanently. It has permanently ensured that the Post Office does not need all the workers it employs, and permanently ensured that Post Office income is so reduced that the organisation does not have the money to pay the people it employs.

So, what does the CWU do now?

Well, it demands a major cash bail-out for its members. I am so tired of unions using the term ‘demand’. They never have ‘requests’; it is always ‘demands’, as if they have the right to just lay down terms as it suits them.

The CWU now says government “has the capacity” to resolve the current problem. What that term means is that the union thinks government has an endless supply of cash (capacity) to just pay it to the Post Office.

So, what does the CWU think will happen next year? Since it has permanently damaged the Post Office, the union will need more ‘capacity’ from taxpayers next year . . . and the year after. Get the picture?

How come this simple picture was not obvious to the CWU leaders? Or was it that they did not care?

The Post Office itself has said that it is on the verge of total collapse. Is it not time that the CWU sat down and reflected on the damage that it has done? It appears that the union leaders do not care if they wipe out the Post Office totally.

Will the CWU leaders have the courage to go and talk to their members face to face and explain what they did?