The End is Nigh

It is not as if the CWU hasn't a history of compromise or reached deals that often favour management over its own members interests to protect the industry's viability . - From an earlier blog

It appears once again the CWU leadership has followed tradition and negotiated a deal [ details of which can be found here ] that stinks of sell out .

Maelstrom in Royal Mail

Have you noticed how Royal Mail keep changing the goal posts in the mail strike ?

What originally started about a pay rise and impending redundancy plans , then involved the fight over pension entitlements and the right to retire at 60 yrs of age and now has become for the Royal Mail mandarins , a campaign to end what they describe as "Spanish practices" [a racist epithet that is insulting to the many hundreds of Spanish who work in Royal Mail ] and now a demand for total flexibility at work .

What just is the "employers agenda" to use a term from the last big postal dispute and eventual agreement of the mid-90s which was supposedly the "way forward" for the business . Is there a hidden motive behind what many see now as a determined attempt by Leighton and Crozier to ensure that no settlement can be reached by negotiation ? It is not as if the CWU hasn't a history of compromise or reached deals that often favour management over its own members interests to protect the industry's viability . We have always got to try and look at the bigger picture which only the Bosses and Government have the blueprint of and that we only see fragmentary glimpses of their real objectives through the fog of battle.

For the worker , it is the money he takes home and the amount of work that he must do to earn it that is foremost in his mind , and lets not hide from the reality - it is to get the most for doing the least . However , for management , it is the entire opposite . They endeavour to extract the most work out of its workforce at the most minimum of cost . The inevitable class struggle , in other words .

This is the postal dispute , the conflict between worker and boss and it is management who are the aggressor in this dispute .

Executive action on their pension proposal cuts
Executive action through the imposition of later starting times
Executive action through the imposition of network changes
Executive action through the ending of Sunday Collections
Executive action against Engineers, the net effect of which will mean a reduction of 10% of posts.
Executive action through the cessation of Employee Share of Savings Scheme (ESOS).

Note that the pay rise , management's offer , that is , which was due in April has not been imposed by executive action .

Postal workers that have withdrawn their labour have OFFERED to return to work for an increase in pay and more talks over working procedures but the managers have REFUSED this offer and are holding out and DEMANDING that they accept their imposed changes unconditionally .

The Union want the issue of pensions removed from pay deal as it is a Group-wide issue not just the postal grades
New technology - Royal Mail want union support to roll out new tech program. Union will agree on basis that there is a share of any savings made!
Network 2007 and later starts - union will accept principle but state that each office should be able to maintain earlier starts if arrival patterns justify it - Isn't that flexibility ?
Full Review of MDECs should take place
Working groups to look at flexibility / D2D [ junk mail]

Certainly not the Luddite response against modernisation that Royal Mail's PR message endeavour to convey to the general public .

Touched upon above was the question of whether Royal Mail and/or the Government possess a secret plan . With a union that is keen to broker a deal as they have always done before but yet with a management that keeps switching the issues it may not be too paranoid of postal workers to believe that such a plan exists . Nor are they the only ones .

"...the DTI, the department responsible for this huge national asset[Royal Mail] , has officials deployed full-time looking at alternative forms of ownership. Regular talks have been held with investment bankers, Royal Mail executives and Richard Gillingwater, head of the Shareholder Executive, which looks after the state's business interests... officials from the DTI have also held deeply hush-hush meetings with Royal Mail executives that have reached the point of discussing the detail of potential changes in ownership, not just the theory..." Mail on Sunday 22 August 2004

A partial flotation of Royal Mail would raise anything between £4 billion and £6 billion if a buyer could be found - a buyer who would like to inherit a low cost and compliant work force with a new more limited pension fund liability - a business with a defeated trade union and demoralised membership .

As socialists , we shed no tears that this nationalised company may become privatised . Only those like Lenin who believed Socialism, as he said , means to "To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service." [State and Revolution] , after the example of Bismarck's Germany , remain under the misconception that it matters .

Regardless of ownership , the necessity for postal workers to organise within their industry and resist the attacks of their employers will continue and to which socialists will offer their support and solidarity , whether it is against the likes of Leighton and Crozier , appointees of the State , or against some rival mail company take-over , or a possible future Private Equity buy-out baron . The class war will only cease when Capitalism ends .

Why postal workers are striking

• Executive action on their pension proposals - Royal Mail will be communicating this to staff next week.

• Executive action through the imposition of later starts on the 8th October.

• Executive action through the imposition of network changes on the 23rd October.

• Executive action through

the cessation of Sunday Collections on the 28th October.

• Executive action against Engineers, the net effect of which will mean a reduction of 10% of posts.

• Executive action through the cessation of Employee Share of Savings Scheme (ESOS) on the 10th October.

These announcements are on top of the fact that Royal Mail will not settle a pay rise owed to members from the 1st April 07.

Instead, they now demand any pay deal must include total flexibility and be dependent on us agreeing outrageous pension’s proposals. This includes closing the Final Salary Scheme for existing employees, attacking past service benefits and increasing retirement age to 65.

The truth is central to the problems in this industry is the people running the company want our members to pay for their mistakes.

Gone postal

My place of wage-slavery has gone out on unofficial strike in support of suspended fellow workers who refused to handle scab mail .

It has always been the tried and tested practice of postal workers that mail transferred from another area on strike , official or unofficial , does not get handled , it is blacked , until there is a return to work agreement at the strike-bound offices . Otherwise , it would be a simple matter for management to pick us off an office at a time . It is called Solidarity . Unity . There is not the luxury of time to call for an official union ballot or use the machinery of industrial relations . Direct Action is required immediately . That's why it invariably leads to wildcat strikes .

The unofficial strikes have now spread from Aberdeen in the North down to Liverpool . Now is the time not to isolate affected areas but to escalate and demonstrate that required solidarity and unity .

Why We Must Win

ROYAL Mail workers will have their pensions slashed unless they work five years longer under secret plans revealed by the Mirror today.

The age staff could retire with full pensions would be raised from 60 to 62 next year and 65 from 2010.
Future rises in pensionable pay would be capped at the inflation rate.
Lump sum payments would also be hit. A worker aged 50 today with 30 years' service could have expected a one-off payment of £29,826. This would be cut to £25,515.

Senior management would be unaffected.

Workers Together

Whilst it is only natural to concentrate upon one's own problems and struggles , it is amiss of us to forget that the class war is a world - wide phenomenon . While the British postal workers have been out on strike and intent upon taking further industrial action , my colleagues at the mail centres in Egypt have also been engaged in strikes and sit-ins for better job security , according to the BBC .

In fact , it is being reported that there is a resurgence in workers resistance to management , the government and also to collaborating trade union leaders .

With inflation at 12.3% , and the gap between rich and poor growing , and in some cases privatisations that have brought job cuts and the loss of fringe benefits workers throughout Egypt are fighting back . Some have been been spurred on by earlier victories .

20,000 workers downed tools and occupied their factory last December, inspiring a series of copycat strikes as their demands for an unpaid bonus promised to all labourers nationally were eventually met. Within four months of the Mahalla strike, workers at three other large textile factories and two cement factories had held stoppages and railway employees had briefly blockaded the Cairo-Alexandria train line backed by a go-slow by Cairo metro drivers. the sit-in by the postal workers, who are calling for fixed term contracts, is one among hundreds of other smaller-scale actions by workers ranging from rubbish collectors to bakers and poultry workers to Suez Canal employees which have also been reported in the Egyptian media.

Angered by its refusal to back their strike action, the Mahalla textile workers submitted their resignations to the General Federation of Trade Unions - a body which is dominated by the ruling National Democratic Party and began calling for an independent union. The pro-government GFTU play the same role as our TUC and our own union leaders , watering down demands and dampening the flames of discontent in return for supposed political influence with those who hold the reins of power . But for a trade union the real power is within its rank and file .It is their own membership and their militancy that gives power to the union .

As a postman in Scotland I offer my full solidarity and complete support to the postal workers in Egypt .

New Mail Strikes

As promised , when the one day strike strategy failed to bring Royal Mail management back to the table to engage in meaningful talks , our union has escalated the strike action . To maximise the disruption within the business our union have now called for what they describe as rolling strikes - different sections of the industry walking out on different days so that the one-day strikes have a cumulative effect in delaying the mail . It appears to have been the choice of this tactic or one of geographical regional strikes . Perhaps that will be utilised in the future if Royal Mail management still refuse to negotiate .

We have already witnessed Alan Leighton secretly planning to jump the sinking ship - or should i say the ship that he has been foremost in scuttling - and returning to his earlier occupation as a shop-keeper .

As far north as The Shetlands the reason for this strike has become clear .

"What Crozier and co. want is to run the Royal Mail into the ground, then float it. A private equity company will pick it up, take it off the stock market for about three years, and then Airpost, Deutsche Post and TNT - the three big couriers - will carve it up between themselves...They want to drive Royal Mail into the ground and then it'll be taken over, ripped apart and not only will Britain lose that heritage but also the finest postal service in the world." -Paul Scarsbrook, local rep has explained , very clearly .

And from South Wales we read :-

The posties are one of the few lots left who, in an era of drearily, dutiful behaviour, won’t hesitate to declare strike action and rise to the challenges of “Down wiv ’em!” and “Everybody out!” ... our generally cheerful posties remain one of the last bastions of true socialist principles...

A striking question of law

Discussion arose with colleagues about the possible use of agency casuals as scabs during the present postal dispute . So what does the law say about the matter .

The Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Business Regulations 2003 and,in particular, Regulation 7. They are enacted under the Employment Agencies Act 1973.

Regulation 7 prohibits an employment business from introducing or supplying a work seeker to the hirer to perform the duties normally performed by employees of the hirer who are taking part in industrial action (or to perform the duties of other employees who may be moved by the employer to cover the work of those taking part in industrial action). There are circumstances when the regulations do not applyand that is when the individual employee of the hirer is taking part in a strike or other industrial action which is considered unofficial.

It is illegal for an agency to supply workers to scab during an official strike , but it is not illegal for the company with workers on official strike to hire and use agency casuals to scab and break the strike .

There does not seem to be any effective enforcement mechanism within the regulations. Agencies are policed through section 9 of the Employment Agencies Act allows the Employment Agency Standards Inspector (part of the DTI) to carry out investigations following a complaint, or to undertake inspections of and/or visits to any employment business. The enforcement of the legislation would appear to be on an application by the secretary of state either for criminal proceeding or a prohibition notice to a tribunal. The DTI can initiate criminal prosecution against the employment business. The maximum penalty is a fine of up to £5,000 per offence and a 10-year ban in carrying out an employment business. In addition, a tribunal, on an application by the secretary of state, may make an order prohibiting a person (including a company) from carrying on or being connected with the carrying on of an employment agency or employment business for up to 10 years on the grounds that the person concerned is unsuitable because of misconduct or any other sufficient reason.

Information gathered from here . Actual legislation found here .

Mail Strikes

The second postal strike was once again solid in the Edinburgh area . Police were called out to the Mail-Centre when an agency driver for TNT endeavoured to cross the picket lines ( the regular TNT driver doesn't break the strike) .
Management were more active , with many drafted in to do postal workers duties , and one particular boss , almost running down a picket . A large number of Summer casuals have been employed and being used in a satellite building away from normal staff to sort mail and reduce the necessity for management to offer overtime , and in effect pay for the lost wages of the strikers .

As an aside i read in the Sunday Herald the return of the siesta - or as it is newly ascribed -"Iberian yoga" . Businesses in Spain have come to recognise that workers benefit from a mid-afternoon break and some have even installed soothing siesta zones with reclining chairs for their employees to snatch 40 winks after lunch, with a 15-minute massage thrown in. Studies confirm that between 2pm and 4pm you feel a little sluggish. Research worldwide shows that productivity improves among those who nap after lunch .

Spain's politicians have tried without success to modify habits that include lunching at teatime and playing football at bedtime. The first attempt to shorten the day by squeezing the lunch break was in the 1980s, in preparation for joining the European Union. The government tried again in 2005, to cope with a globalised economy. But Spaniards reject an early hurried lunch as ludicrous.
At present, Europeans lunch while Spaniards stroll to their morning coffee. Europe returns to work at 2pm, while Spain prepares for a two-hour meal. At 5pm, when most Europeans think of knocking off, Spain works another three hours. By the time Spaniards dine, Europeans are mostly asleep. Pan-European business has to be conducted between staggered international mealtimes. Without a break, Spain's working day is exhaustingly long. But with the shorter day unenforceable, Spanish business is rehabilitating the siesta, which is now set to join the office gym, crèche and language classes as perks offered by forward-looking employers to ensure a happy and productive workforce.

Now , thats the type of modernisation that Royal Mail should be exploring - structuring the industry around life-style .

Postal Solidarity - Being Part of the Union

Royal Mail management have endeavoured to counter the success of the psotal strike with claims that nationally 60% worked . I can only talk about Edinburgh area , and can confirm that it was overwhelmingly supported by well over 90% of postyal workers , at the Mail-Centre , at the town delivery offices and most of the outlying and rural areas .

From what i have been hearing and reading about the 40% who Royal Mail bosses claim to have crossed the picket lines they are a mere phantasm of Crozier's and Leighton's enfeebled imaginations . Just another blatant lie they have issued to hood-wink the public .

To be honest , i was expecting much more scabbing at the Mail-Centre than the handful that actually did ,due to the fact that it employs a high percentage of part-time Associate Grades who consider the job as a temporary stop-gap to help out with university fees and they therefore have no long-term commitment to the industry . Yet they too went out in support of the pay claim .

But no resting on our laurels . Keep the momentum going . The struggle has only begun .

Going Postal

From the Guardian , Gregor Gall is professor of industrial relations, University of Hertfordshire , author of 2003 book, "The Meaning of Militancy? Postal Workers and Industrial Relations" writes:-

...Postal workers understand the link between decent working conditions and a decent public service. Through the Communication Workers' Union (CWU) they have organised to defend both, and the link between the two. So the battle is actually over both pay and jobs because this is about the quality of postal workers' working lives and the service they provide...

... it became clear to me how much pride postal workers invested in their jobs. Their ethos was to provide a vital universal service to all, and for them the issues of a sufficient number of workers necessary to provide a quality service became two sides of the same coin.

The current dispute...stems from a neoliberal agenda pursued by Tory and Labour governments alike...The public-service role, a universal service provision and fair employment cannot be provided by market mechanisms and private competition...

When i became a postman it was generally accepted that we were an organisation that existed to facilitate other businesses to make money , much like the provision good roads and they would share the cost out of the general taxation system. Later , however we were seen as a cash milk-cow to provide revenue for governments and once that was recognised we were then re-structured into individual enterprises to be sold off , a sale that failed to materialise. Yet we still remain packaged and parcelled into separate units stacked on the shop-shelf , ready to be sold and purchased when the political climate is judged right , and many of us believe that is the motive of the present Post Office mandarins in seeking conflict rather than resolution to the mail problem .

The once inter-connected unified postal system has not been integrated into the new world of the e-mail and the internet ( snail-mail may have become superfluous in many ways but physical delivery of goods has not ) , a commercial failure that cannot be laid at the feet of postal workers .

As much as i question Lenin there is a element of truth in this description

A witty German Social-Democrat of the seventies of the last century called the postal service an example of the socialist economic system. This is very true. At the present the postal service is a business organized on the lines of state-capitalist monopoly... But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand...To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service - State and Revolution Chapter 3

Kropotkin describes how a postal service should be organised and how decisions should be made :-

The Postal Union did not elect an international postal parliament in order to make laws for all postal organisations adherent to the Union...They proceeded by means of agreement. To agree together they resorted to congresses; but, while sending delegates to their congresses they did not say to them, "Vote about everything you like--we shall obey." They put forward questions and discussed them first themselves; then they sent delegates acquainted with the special question to be discussed at the congress, and they sent delegates--not rulers. Their delegates returned from the congress with no laws in their pockets, but with proposals of agreements. Such is the way assumed now (the very old way, too) for dealing with questions of public interest... Anarchism Communism , Its Basis and Principles