Fight the Royal Mail Sell Off

The Con-Dem government has announced a stock market floatation of the majority of Royal Mail within nine months, with the rest to follow at a later date. This is the biggest potential privatisation since the dark days of Thatcher. It threatens a national service which has been in public ownership for 479 years. This is part of the general attack on public services. The NHS, education, local authority services in general and every part of the civil service are being attacked by the Con-Dems. Working people everywhere are experiencing massive cuts in living standards.

The Labour leaders are rushing to say they will not reverse the cuts if they win the next election. So it is urgent that the trade unions build an organised fightback against this onslaught. The CWU should lead the call from all the unions under attack to build united action. There is no time to waste. A 24-hour general strike would be a serious blow to all the government’s cuts and privatisation plans.

The proposal for stock market floatation of Royal Mail is a partial climbdown. It is a result of the campaign from the CWU and its members. Originally the plan was that Royal Mail be sold to an existing company. But due to the strength of our members and the likelihood of industrial action facing a new buyer, the government has changed tack. Likewise the plan to offer discounted shares to Royal Mail employees has now changed. These are now going to be given away for free in an attempt to buy off the workforce.

The weakness of the government position is exposed by the fact that they have not said how much is going to be sold off, just a majority.

In its recent consultative ballot CWU members voted by 96% in opposition to privatisation with a turnout of 74%. The union must now capture this mood and keep explaining to our membership the dangers of the sell-off and what it would mean to our members’ terms and conditions and to the public service.

The government has stated that whoever owns Royal Mail will be duty bound to keep the universal service and a six-day delivery across the country. This is something which no one will trust, as a private company will be striving for maximum profit rather than an effective service. The likelihood of rural communities receiving a six-day service is slim. As will the idea of a universal price, wherever the mail is going.
We have already seen private company TNT delivering mail around London, employing around 1,000 postal workers on terms and conditions nowhere near those of Royal Mail staff. And they plan to have 20,000 more around the country within five years, with the government proudly announcing these as ‘new jobs’.

These are clearly not new jobs, they replace existing postal workers on worse terms and conditions while failing to provide a universal service. TNT workers’ conditions are some of the worst around, just above minimum wage and some on zero hour contracts. It’s clear the government want a race to the bottom on terms and conditions with Royal Mail workers facing real attacks.

The CWU has announced that it will have no choice but to proceed with an industrial action ballot if it can’t get a watertight national agreement on protection of its existing national agreements.

We should go further than this. No matter what the law says we should take industrial action against privatisation. As the law stands just now you can only take action if there is a trade dispute and the question of who owns the company would not be seen as a legitimate trade dispute under the current anti-trade union legislation. But we should make it clear we will be fighting privatisation by any means necessary, up to and including strike action.

Also our fight cannot be taken in isolation from the pay talks and other talks around pensions as well as the future of Royal Mail. The union proposed a two-year deal which was followed up with a counter proposal of a three-year deal by the management. This is because they want to clear up all issues and have a period of settling-in for a newly privatised service without any major industrial relation issues. We should oppose any pay deals longer than two years.

Clearly we are facing a major fight with the management and the Government over privatisation in the coming months. It should also be noted that the Labour leadership has at best been lukewarm in its opposition to the sell-off. They were pushing for it not so long ago and have refused to give a commitment to bring Royal Mail back into public ownership if elected back into power.

This is a fight which will decide what type of public service we will have. One to serve the needs of the people or one to serve the needs of greedy investors only looking for a profit. Time for united action now!