Vote no in the CWU Royal Mail ballot

Socialist Party members in CWU

Ballot papers have gone out to Communication Workers Union (CWU) members for the vote by postal workers on the Royal Mail/CWU Business Recovery, Transformation and Growth Agreement.

Socialist Party members are arguing for a ‘no’ vote.

18 days

Royal Mail workers have taken up to 18 days of strike action, which was a real sacrifice.

They recognised that this was an assault by senior management against the CWU, and its right to organise in Royal Mail and represent its members.  And what started as a ‘normal’ pay dispute quickly developed into a general attack on postal workers’ hard-won terms and conditions and working practices.

The fight by the CWU and its 115,000 postal members has undoubtedly pushed back Royal Mail bosses and forced out the brutal boss Simon Thompson.

The outburst of members’ anger, that forced a delay in the ballot on the deal, has won an extra £900 – although there is concern about where it is coming from, seemingly from our pensions.

But the question is: does the deal still take too much from members? Have we pushed Royal Mail back far enough? We have forced concessions from management, but can more be won?

The attack on sick pay and ill-health retirement is still in the deal, and there are too many doubts over the future of the Universal Service Obligation.

And how can we make a deal when there are still hundreds of CWU reps and members sacked or suspended?

Members have shown that they are prepared to fight over the last year, but momentum was lost following the last strike action on Christmas Eve. The union’s leadership has allowed the mood to ebb, and Royal Mail has deliberately dragged this out.

It has also been a mistake by the CWU leadership not to take on management’s false claim that these changes are needed because of Royal Mail’s financial situation. It is the parasitic ownership since privatisation which has plunged the company into this position. The fat cats have got rich on dividends while postal workers are under attack.

Keir Starmer

Yet the union leadership has refused to raise renationalisation of Royal Mail, despite it being union policy! Moreover, they should have demanded that Keir Starmer publicly commits to taking the company back into public ownership – a policy agreed at last autumn’s Labour Party conference, and celebrated by CWU leaders at the time.

This would have put huge pressure on Royal Mail and its political backers, the crisis-ridden Tory government.

We argue that this deal should be rejected. If it is, the CWU should launch a new campaign, which will need to be both industrial and political.

To restore members’ confidence, there would need to be a clear fighting programme, with the real launch of a strike fund.

The CWU should then also take the lead in calling for coordinated action across the union movement against the Tory cost-of-living squeeze and their anti-union legislation.

And alongside that has to be the demand to take Royal Mail out of the hands of the privateer vultures and into socialist public ownership – vital to defend jobs, pay, terms and conditions.