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After a year of spiralling costs and political upheaval, most of us are now looking forward to the distraction of Christmas celebrations: feelgood pop songs, festive markets and time off to see family and friends. But the window for posting cards and presents has become much shorter this year. Although many people will be frustrated about the last Christmas posting date being brought forward by a week, things are terrible for postal workers – which is why Royal Mail posties are out there now, striking for their survival.
After four days of strike action in late August and early September, with more than 98% of Communication Workers Union (CWU) members voting to back a second round of strikes, the situation has only got worse. Union members have been carrying out six days of strike action over the weeks leading up to Christmas. And they aren’t the only ones: rail workers, university staff, teachers, civil servants, ambulance workers and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) have all been striking this month.
Royal Mail’s recent proposals are threatening workers’ job security and eroding their sick pay. The company, which was privatised in 2013, seems to want to become a gig-economy-style parcel courier that relies on casual labour (A Royal Mail spokesperson says that it is “proud to provide the best pay and conditions in our industry”, and that its proposed reforms pay up to 40% more than competitors – but its recent pay offer to workers still does not match inflation).
Two years ago, I worked for Royal Mail in lockdown and felt driven into the ground by my impossible workloads and low pay. Despite having great colleagues and supportive and understanding managers, I decided to quit in early 2021 to preserve my mental and physical health. One of the things I wrote about back then was how Royal Mail temporarily stopped Saturday mail deliveries between April and June 2020. The company said this was to cope with staff absence and self-isolation, but many of us felt it was a cynical ploy to undermine the service.
Royal Mail has a universal service obligation to deliver to every address across the country six days a week at a uniform price. Postal workers fear that the company wants to undermine this obligation and sell off Parcelforce, which it currently owns, in order to create a separate delivery company and leave the main Royal Mail delivery business to rot. The CWU also worries that recent proposals could lead to thousands of job losses. In November, Royal Mail asked the government to allow it to stop delivering mail on Saturdays. I wish I could say I was surprised.
One of the reasons why I quit, and why 115,000 CWU members are now striking, is the low pay for what is extremely physical work and an essential, much loved service with a 400-year legacy. Like many postal workers hired since the service was privatised in 2013, I was employed on a part-time contract, with little hope of a full-time role, and simply couldn’t survive on the money. Incredibly, despite a cost of living crisis and soaring inflation, a postie on the picket lines told me that new staff are already starting on worse terms and conditions than current staff.
The feeling on the ground is that the company has shown posties total disrespect after they worked through the pandemic, with an insulting below-inflation pay rise and watered-down sick pay. Since 2020, posties feel that profit-seeking has continued to erode the pay, conditions and morale of workers who helped support the UK through a pandemic, and they’ve had enough. In response to Royal Mail’s proposals, the CWU general secretary, Dave Ward, warned: “These proposals spell the end of Royal Mail as we know it, and its degradation from a national institution into an unreliable, Uber-style, gig-economy company.”
Royal Mail’s spokesperson said it had (among other things) offered a new profit share scheme for employees, more generous voluntary redundancy terms and a commitment to not undertake any compulsory redundancies – but even without compulsory redundancies, the company is planning a total of 10,000 job losses by August 2023, made up of voluntary redundancies and attrition. On top of the thousands of redundancies, Royal Mail’s recent offer included a non-backdated 3.5% pay increase (which amounts to a real-terms pay cut), cuts to sick pay, removal of the Sunday premium payment, later start and finish times (thereby abandoning the morning delivery period), the removal of union support from the workplace, and no job security commitments (a spokesperson said the company has “no intention of derecognising any union” but that it wanted to “review the current CWU structure to ensure it is fit for purpose”).
Royal Mail has blamed business losses for having to cut 10,000 jobs before August 2023, even offering managers bonuses of up to £30,000 to help deliver this brutal wave of job cuts. Meanwhile, the company’s senior management gave themselves shares that will potentially be worth more than £2m (A spokesperson said the company had granted senior management share options as part of a “long term incentive scheme”, and that these are linked to performance).
While supporters of privatisation may argue that it encourages innovation, saves governments money in the short term, and improves efficiency and competition in some sectors, the rest of us have to live in the real world; the systematic degradation of the UK’s national health service, transport infrastructure, energy supply and water quality demonstrates that public services run purely for shareholder profit fail both workers and customers, and erode the key institutions that support the social fabric of this country.
A select few have become very rich off the backs of working-class people, but the rest of us have to contend with unreliable, overcrowded trains and buses, rivers and seas filled with raw sewage, dangerously long waiting times to see a doctor or get an ambulance, collapsing energy providers and spiralling costs. Privatisation is driven by the naked pursuit of profit and an abdication of responsibility for the quality of services or any consideration for the public good. Consecutive governments, on both sides of the aisle, have chosen to let the market dictate the quality of our public services, and this is where we are.
I have been told that the real glimmer of hope for striking CWU members is the resilience of their co-workers, and the solidarity of people on the streets. They are determined to fight as long and as hard as they need to. Under the current political system, where even the “Labour” party that arose from the trade union movement is hesitant to unequivocally support striking workers, there appears to be only one direction of travel: pay and conditions for working people will continue to worsen.
People are realising that the collective power of unions such as the CWU, the Rail, Maritime and Transport workers’ union or RCN are the only voices we have in such an unfair system and, as much as the politicians and media try to pit the strikers against the public, we are all fighting for a life worth living: fair pay and working conditions, and a secure future for us and our loved ones.
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