A London Postal Worker Royal Mail, ably assisted by much of the media, has tried its hardest to portray the postal dispute as an attempt by workers to defend outdated methods of working in the face of the drive to modernisation, to the detriment of consumers.
In fact, the dispute has been as much about defending a service to the public as g
defending working conditions. Mail has been able to ensure
As a public service, Royal a daily delivery to every address in the country at one standard price. This, and much else, is under threat with the introduction of competition to the postal market. Proposals for regional pricing have already been discussed, and the competitors are cerinterested in Lany HOL delivering to rural areas.
A big thing has been made of businesses "deserting" Royal Mail to its competitors during the strikes, but rarely mentioned is that these items are still delivered by Royal Mail's workforce.
Royal Mail acts as a kind of 'Network Rail' - competitors may transport the post across the country, but then they drop it on Royal Mail to actually deliver because the investment in a workforce and infrastructure which would be necessary to deliver it themselves would be immense, and why bother when there is already a system they can milk.
On top of this, Royal Mail has already decided that deliveries will be later and collections cancelled Sundays. In many areas last collections will be before deliveries.
A public service requires a motivated workforce.A service run not primarily for profit can, in theory, provide decent working conditions for a workforce which, in turn, is committed to providing a proper service to the public.
All this is at risk in the current postal dispute.
Royal Mail's intention is to drastically attack its labour costs, to bring them down to those of its competitors.
It claims its workforce is 25% overpaid and 40% underworked.
Hence the attempt to pay a below-inflation pay increase, scrap the final salary pension scheme and introduce total flexibility among the workforce. Drastically reaucing le workforce, with or without increased automation, part and parcel of this.
Postal workers have shown, through official and unofficial strikes, that they recognise the seriousness of ulls unreat.
They have withstood victimisation by management and the media, stood firm against attempts to bully them into cutting corners to get the mail out including stopping a full days pay when they refuse to work overtime!), and are continuing to do so.
Unfortunately, the CWU leadership has lacked this determination.
It's time ACK
From the start they gave the impression that this was just another dispute that can be settled by cosy agreement. They used the workforce as a stage army to be wheeled on and off stage merely to pressurise management into accepting compromise.
Whenever unofficial action broke out the leadership ran around trying to stop it, and when it looked as if it might spiral into national action it was hard to tell whether it was the CWU leadership or Royal Mail management that was more desperate to bring the dispute to an end. Postal workers have withstood victimisation by management and the media, and are continuing to do so. Unfortunately, the CWU leadership has lacked this determination.
Lo and behold, Royal Mail management got high court injunction against the next round of ofticial action (barely fought by the union leadership) and hours management union leadership announced they had a deal.
Strike action was supposed to be accompanied by political campaign, but this has been pathetic.
Again, leadership seem to think that chats behind closed doors will produce results, rather than putting real pressure on the
on strike
ONU to save yor
io save yo government to responsibility for a company it still owns. The result of such cosy chats? Gordon Brown saying we should end the strikes and go back to work on Royal Mail's terms. Now we are seeing the fruits of this approach. What has our leadership achieved for us after months of action?
below-inflation pay increase, a worsening of our pension scheme and an agreement to flexibility, including that workers can be moved to a "nearby location" and their start and finish times changed at a whim. Nothing on the threatened closure of mail centres, nothing on job losses, and all underpinned by a belief that the union shares a common interest with "the business" in increasing productivity.
That's why it is important to mobilise for the biggest possible no vote against the deal to ensure that the dynamism of postal workers in action is not completely dissipated by a leadership that in its majority refused to fight.