Royal Mail: Massive vote for action by CWU members

There was a deafening roar of approval at the special meeting convened by the Communications Workers Union (CWU) when it was announced that postal workers in Royal Mail had voted yes to strike action by a massive 97.1%. The turnout easily surpassed the high threshold imposed on the trade unions by the Cameron Tory government, designed to prevent industrial action. Emerging from the meeting Gary Clark, secretary of the CWU Scotland No 2 branch, spoke to the Socialist.

“It’s definitely full steam ahead now. The earliest we can take strike action is 20 November because of the mediation period and legal notice period.

The mood in the conference and up and down the country is we’re up for strike action. This is a different ball game to what we’ve been involved in before. We’ve got a different CEO to deal with, but the members are definitely up for the fight.

The issues are the breakup of Royal Mail that is proposed, with parts possibly being sold off. We’re due a shorter working week, a one-hour reduction this month, but management has backtracked.

Royal Mail bosses are walking away from national agreements. They want to do away with 40,000 jobs, which amount to a third of the workforce.

This is a fight to defend the public service too. If we lose this fight the public service is gone.

CEO Rico Back wants to rip Royal Mail to shreds for the benefit of the hedge funds, big business and capitalism.

This is going to be a key battle for the whole of the trade union movement. Rico Back and Royal Mail have shown they want to not only break up Royal Mail, but intend take on one of the largest and strongest trade unions in Britain. If he breaks the CWU then the rest of the trade union movement will suffer.

So the whole trade union movement must get behind the CWU now.

We’ll now go back to the members and make sure we’re prepared to strike during the Christmas period. We don’t want to strike at Christmas, we want to provide a service, but we have no choice and we will use the ballot we have now got for industrial action.”

Socialist Party Scotland and the Socialist Party in England and Wales stands four-square behind the men and women in the Royal Mail group who are determined to ensure that the agreement they signed up to with the employer in 2017 is kept to.

We believe that the best way to properly reward the workforce and to improve the public service is by renationalising Royal Mail under democratic workers’ control.