All out war in the CWU/Royal Mail dispute

This article was written before the statement on Tuesday evening, 28 March, from the CWU leadership that they would wait until the Royal Mail board meeting on 29 March before possibly announcing strike dates. Socialist Party members in the CWU believe this is a mistake and that strike dates should have been tabled before the board meeting to put pressure on management and give the CWU membership a clear signal we won’t give up or give in to threats about the possiblity of Royal Mail being put into administration. It’s essential that the CWU leadership also clearly call for renationalisation of Royal Mail.

By Socialist Party members in the CWU

As we go to press, there is a strong possibility that serious strike action will be called by the CWU Postal Executive, as Royal Mail Senior Management threaten to take the company into administration. This is clearly a major threat to the jobs of the 115,000 CWU members but also the other staff in Royal Mail, including managers who are represented by Unite, and who have been used by senior management in the dispute.The CWU must now call an urgent meeting with Unite for a united battle with Royal Mail management and the Tory Government who are backing them.

This is clearly an attack aimed at smashing the CWU as an orginised force in Royal Mail and must be met by militant industrial action. The union must up the ante by re-launching and escalating strike action by postal workers. But it must go further by issuing an immediate appeal to the whole of the trade union movement to come to the aid of the CWU.

The union leadership must demand an emergency TUC General Council to co-ordinate strike action with CWU members and to support mass solidarity rallies that the CWU should call in major cities all over the UK. The CWU’s strike fund must be publicly launched and used to mobilise fellow unions, their members and working-class communities.

We can’t allow the parasitic privateers to put Royal Mailattempt into bankruptcy, putting 150,000 jobs at risk along with the complete destruction of a 500 year old national service. The posties have a proud record of refusing to cross the picket lines of other unions and their members, and have received huge support in their 11-month struggle.

privatisation

The threat of administration is directly due to the privatisation of Royal Mail. We have seen £1.9 billion given to shareholders in the nine years since the company was sold off. In the last 12 months around £600 million was given to shareholders and the directors.

They also spent millions on trying to break the CWU. They paid agency workers to work during strike action, and gave management redundancy payments worth two-years’ wages and then offered these same managers £40,000 to come back as “consultants” for nine months to help introduce their changes. But this role of the managers was opposed by the Unite leadership. Now Royal Mail bosses claim to be making substantial losses. We demand to open the books to show us where the profits have gone.

What limits the ability to extract profit from the postal service is the Universal Service Obligation, to deliver to every home in the country six days a week. The parliamentary BEIS committee has written to Royal Mail to say it has “systematically failed to deliver” the USO.

How could it be otherwise? Over years, the service has been divided up, separating different sections, such as Parcel Force. Now the bosses plan to hive off profitable parts of the business, such as the GLS international delivery service, leaving the ‘loss-making’ mail universal service to function on its own – unlike in other countries such as France and Italy, where even privatised services receive government subsidy. Bosses want to abandon USO so they can concentrate on delivering packets, gig-economy style.

The CWU should not only be demanding that the notorious CEO Simon Thompson, whop was totally exposed before MPs, be removed, but the whole board. The company should be brought back into public ownership, re-nationalised under socialist democratic control. A publicly owned, integrated service would precisely ensure that essential aspects of a service would be maintained, and defend workers’ jobs and communities.

In fact, as the pandemic showed, the service is a tremendous public asset. Imagine what could be achieved with a service that visits every home, with public buildings in every community.
The CWU leadership is due to meet Keir Starmer and they must demand that he publicly commits to the policy passed at last autumn’s Labour Party Conference, that the next Labour Government will bring Royal Mail back into public ownership. If governments can step in to rescue banks, then we must demand that they can act to preserve and extend a vital public service like Royal Mail.

This is a weak and divided Tory government, facing the biggest strike wave for years. If governments can step in to rescue banks, then of course they can act to preserve and extend a vital public service like Royal Mail.

The threat of administration can have an impact on a section of the membership who will be worried about what impact this could have on them, with the threat of compulsory redundancy on statutory terms, capped at the legal rate set by the government of around £17,000 and their pensions put into the Pension Protection Fund at reduced levels.

This brutal threat is par for the course for Royal Mail senior management. We also now have around 400 reps and activists either sacked or suspended and its clear that Thompson and co. are outrageously trying to use them as leverage against the union and the membership to force through a deal on their terms. It should be pointed out that the CWU had a victory against management when a rep won his appeal against dismissal. Yet Royal Mail has refused to bring the him back to work! Does this sound like they want a reasonable resolution to the dispute?! No deal must be done until we secure a way to get all members and reps who been attacked back to work.

But a serious strategy, appealing for support across the union movement can give confidence to members, who just six weeks ago gave a further mandate for action by an incredible 96% on a 77% turnout in the re-ballot. There must be meeting in every workplace to discuss the stepping up of the action.

This is now a very serious situation for the CWU. This is not a time to retreat – these attacks must be met with militancy by calling a week-long strike action. Any negotiations should be in full view of the membership and if there no more concessions by the management then preparations to an all out strike must be put in place and if they try and carry out administration then we must be prepared to occupy all Royal Mail buildings as they belong to us – we are the Royal Mail!

Victory to the CWU!