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Today is National Postal Workers Day, a day where people celebrate the posties who go above and beyond in the communities they serve. The only time I thought about this commemoration was in 2020, at the height of Covid-19.
In that bleak year, I was the only person that plenty of people saw in person. My colleagues picked up essentials, called in on the vulnerable and went to work in fancy dress to cheer up self-isolating people. Kids made me feel like a celebrity by chalking my name on the street, we were called the “heroes of the pandemic” by newspapers and even King Charles thanked me and my colleagues for our “dedication, resilience and hard work”.
In those days, there seemed to be a newfound respect for the people who keep things going in every country in the world. We felt sure that the sacrifices of those who went out, got sick and even lost their lives so that society could carry on as normal would not be forgotten.
But that didn’t happen. In exchange for all we did during the pandemic – and the profit of £758 million we made for Royal Mail (and the £400 million for shareholders) – postal workers were rewarded this year with an imposed 2 per cent pay increase, at a time when the real-terms inflation rate is more than 11 per cent. When our union objected, our CEO Simon Thompson – who awarded himself a £142,000 bonus earlier this year – informed the union that they would be withdrawing from all legal agreements the company has ever made with the union.
Since then, we’re now apparently the enemy within. We’ve had threats to have our pay docked if we’re sick. Managers have been offered five-figure sums to break us. On a day when we looked particularly powerful on the pickets, Thompson told us 10,000 of us would be sacked if we didn’t stop the dispute. Many of our union reps have been suspended. We’ve been told we’re “wrecking Christmas” by the same politicians and journalists who once clapped us on the doorsteps. How this is true I don’t know; Thompson didn’t bother turning up at talks to avert Christmas strikes, and when the union tried to call a Christmas truce yesterday that too was rejected.
People don’t strike without a very good reason, and our reasons are clear: the current Royal Mail plan is about destroying a national institution. The changes they want us to accept are about people like me having casualised hours, my sick pay being all but vanished away, my dignity on the job evaporated overnight, and the people who will follow in my footsteps being replaced with “owner-drivers”, Uber-style. On their current plans, I’d lose about £45 a week at work, which might not sound like much to you, but it is to me and many of my workmates.
We don’t want this situation. But I don’t want to look my children in the eye and tell them when they’re adults that decent jobs like the one I got at Royal Mail aren’t available for them anymore, and we did nothing to fight that. In that light, I feel emboldened seeing my fellow key workers – rail workers, nurses, cleaners, paramedics – also saying that enough is enough and that we cannot keep accepting the degradation of our country by a self-serving, tiny elite.
I do my job because I love it, and I will never forget the appreciation for my efforts during those days in 2020. But I will also remember people beeping their cars, bringing supplies and biscuits to our picket lines in this crisis, and saying hello to other striking key workers, like I did last week on nurses’ picket lines. These people are actually what make this country – not the politicians and businessmen who wreck our services, rip us off on ticket prices and pollute our rivers with sewage.
For everyone whose nickname for a key worker is a “vile s***bag who drives ambulances”, there are millions of decent people who know we’re the overlooked workers who quietly keep things going, and support us in our fight for better treatment.
So despite our best efforts, we’ll be back on the picket lines this Friday and on Christmas Eve to demand a decent standard of living, dignity on the job and a future for the Royal Mail. Not a lot to ask for, I wouldn’t think, but hey-ho. If you see us when you’re out and about, please say hello, toot your horn or come over for a chat – you might make someone’s day.
