Sacked Royal Mail boss and union ballot delay show importance of a fight in post dispute

News

Both Royal Mail and the leaders of the CWU union are worried by the level of resistance to their deal to end the long-running post dispute

Two apparently unconnected events last week showed the fear gripping both Royal Mail bosses and CWU union leaders. It is that postal workers might reject their carefully-negotiated deal.

First, the right wing Daily Telegraph reported that chief ­executive Simon Thompson would be out of the job. The newspaper said that “militant unions” had hounded him out and that his sacking had handed the CWU a “spectacular public relations coup”. But Thompson was surely a goner after his disastrous appearances in front of a parliamentary cross-party committee earlier this year. There he was revealed to be utterly clueless about how his company works.

Second, the union announced it was putting back the coming ballot of members on the poor deal it had brokered with bosses. Voting had been due to start this week but will now commence on Thursday 25 May. Rob works at a mail centre in the south west of England, and is an activist in the group Postal Workers Say No. He thinks the two events are connected.

“Royal Mail have waited until now to sack Thompson because they couldn’t do it during the negotiations. That would have looked weak,” he told Socialist Worker. “Like most postal workers, I’m happy he has gone. But what’s really behind this is the drive of both the company and the union to say, ‘We’re working with you. This move shows you can trust us.”

But behind the talk of conciliation, managers in mail centres and delivery offices are on the attack, says Rob. “Every day they impose ‘revisions’ to our working practices without involving the union. In my place that has meant ­workers that have been doing the job for more than 30 years being thrown off their usual duties and told they must now do any task they are told to.

“They then bring in new, younger workers to do their job. Managers hope that these kids will do it quicker and without question because they don’t know any better. But these revisions are failing every day and that is being used to bash workers. It’s all part of a plan to drive older workers out of the job.”

The frustration and anger are spread across the whole company. That in turn means the vote against the deal could be far larger than CWU leaders would expect from members accustomed to accepting its line.

This is likely the real reason behind the union’s decision to put back the ballot. In his letter to branches last week, general secretary Dave Ward ­admitted the move was due to the ­“requirement to create the right environment for the ballot to be conducted”.

He also said the company was obliged to respect previous ­agreements on revisions. That means Ward wants to buy time to bring Royal Mail managers to heel before voting starts. But having taken the threat of strikes off the table months ago, what is there now for the bosses to be scared of?

Workers’ names have been changed to protect them from Royal Mail attack

Reps’ meet shows there is resistance

A CWU reps’ meeting in York last week showed again how union leaders are meeting unexpectedly strong resistance among people it expects to sell their deal on the shop floor.

Dave Ward, Andy Furey and other CWU leaders addressed the meeting saying they wanted to have an “informed debate” about the agreement. Peter, from Postal Workers Say Vote No, reports, “Despite the peace deal at the top, this hasn’t stopped management imposing revisions (in at least some cases supported by CWU officials), workload hikes, attendance cuts and later starts. Many said that most, in one case 90 percent of their members, were not going to support the deal, and in some cases neither would they.”

The union leadership insists the ongoing war of attrition in Royal Mail reflects a split among the bosses, with a harder faction wanting the union to reject the agreement so they can impose even harsher conditions. More likely is that, under instruction from the top, managers are fighting for an interpretation of the deal that puts them in the driving seat—and sidelines the union. Under the agreement, delivery office managers can impose a cut to time worked indoors by up to 35 minutes a day, increase workloads, and use computerised tracking data for disciplinary issues.

Despite two delivery union reps raising all these questions, the leadership would only address the use of data. They said that they had assurances from the firm that they would be fair. But with hundreds of reps and activists still suspended, surely there are few left at Royal Mail that still believe this?

For details of the Postal Workers Say Vote No group go to bit.ly/VoteNoRM

Was Royal Mail ever really on the brink?

The CWU leadership has used talk of the collapse of Royal Mail into insolvency as one of its main justifications for the poor deal they are selling. The union has to act in the best interests of the company, it says, otherwise the service and the jobs it provides will be gone.

But how do we know the apparently precarious state of the company is not a bluff?

The opening lines in last week’s Daily Telegraph report hint at exactly this. “The threat of administration at Royal Mail appears to have passed, at least for the time being, after a deal with the trade unions brought a desperately needed end to one of the most protracted and bitter pay disputes of our times,” it read. The piece went on, saying, “Perhaps it’s naive to think that the threat of bankruptcy was ever a realistic prospect.

“It may only have been a negotiation tactic—an attempt to focus minds as the talks repeatedly hit a brick wall.”

What happened to ‘no strings’?

 Accepting the logic of a firm on the brink drove CWU leaders to collapse their strike strategy to win a pay rise above the 2 percent Royal Mail offered last year. “The union said we were going out for a no-strings pay rise. Now that demand is no longer mentioned because we won nothing,” says Rob. “The union slammed on the brakes in January, and we’ve had no action since last year. 

“Instead we’ve had a shit deal imposed on us for last year, and been offered 10 percent over three years. Meanwhile, at my mail centre, we’ve got people so poor they have to borrow petrol money from their parents to get to work, and lots of people using food banks. But one thing we can be sure of is that Simon Thompson’s goodbye handshake will be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.”