Postal workers in the CWU trade union were due to take strike action next Monday, 4th November, over attacks on terms and conditions. Following negotiations between the CWU and Royal Mail, and the acceptance of an improved offer, the strike action has been postponed. We publish here an article, written before these latest developments, by a postal worker, which outlines the issues involved in the strike – issues that have still not been resolved with the – now privatised – Royal Mail.
Postal workers in the CWU trade union were due to take strike action next Monday, 4th November, over attacks on terms and conditions. Following negotiations between the CWU and Royal Mail, and the acceptance of an improved offer, the strike action has been postponed. We publish here an article, written before these latest developments, by a postal worker, which outlines the issues involved in the strike – issues that have still not been resolved with the – now privatised – Royal Mail.
On Monday 4th November, along with the vast majority (78% on a 62% turnout) of my colleagues, I am (unless there is an agreement before then) going on strike over our terms and conditions in the wake of privatisation. With a fog of disinformation being disseminated by the Royal Mail PR machine, it is useful to underline exactly what this dispute is about.
Royal Mail say their (rejected) offer to the CWU has been for three years of protection for current employees’ terms and conditions. This means that permanent staff will continue to be permanent, that they will be entitled to the same sick, maternity/paternity and annual leave, as well as working the same hours, and with the company following the same procedures/rates for overtime, grievances etc.
But three years is a short time, and as Chris Webb of the CWU has written in a Facebook post, if, after three years, terms and conditions are changed and Royal Mail workers are put on the same rates as competitors TNT, they stand to lose around £600 per month.
Profits for shareholders; pressures for workers
Privatisation has meant that the Royal Mail is now legally obliged to return as big a profit as possible to its shareholders. This was not the case when the company was nationally owned; because of this employees of the company now face a threat that they did not before. To coincide with the privatisation of the Royal Mail, the government introduced changes to the Transfer of Undertakings and Protection of Employment (TUPE) which waters down the sort of protections workers get if their company’s ownership changes hands. A TUC press release notes that “employers will now be able to re-negotiate changes to collective agreements one year after transfer. This will give them extra flexibility to cut pay and conditions after a transfer takes place”. In addition, terms and conditions will not apply to outsourced parts of the business – this could mean that Royal Mail undercuts its own staff with franchised Mail Centres and Delivery Offices. Similar privatisations in Europe have resulted in casualised staff on piecework rates, with TNT – the privatised Dutch operator – one of the worst offenders.
So, perhaps Royal Mail looks generous in offering a three year deal given their new legal obligation of only one year! But we know that when the three year period is up changes will occur – and there will be no legal challenge available to the CWU. In addition, whilst changes may not happen to existing employees, there is no reason why, without an agreement, the company cannot begin to hire new staff on inferior contracts or even zero-hour contracts (this is what agency staff are already on, although their use is currently limited to times of heightened demand).
What is likely is that the company’s workforce will be hollowed out. Management pressure, casual, part-time and short-term working will all increase. In five years time postal workers will not even enjoy the relatively (when compared with TNT workers) good pay and conditions that they do now. A successful attack by the industry leader will embolden others to do the same and the race to the bottom will be unleashed across the industry and into the wider economy. In the face of propaganda from the liberal and right-wing media, this is what other workers must understand: that a victory for one section of workers is good for all of us, in that it improves our bargaining position and will create pressure to drive up wages across the board. What we really want to see is not only decent protections for Royal Mail employees, but also an improvement in the position of workers at our competitors across the postal/courier industry.
Fighting for fair pay
Royal Mail workers want an agreement for a simple no-strings-attached above-inflation pay rise. Royal Mail’s offer has been presented as an 8.6 per cent rise over three years. With RPI at 3.2 per cent and CPI at 2.7 per cent, on paper this does not look so bad – and if it were the only issue facing staff, it is likely that it would be accepted. However, the reality is that the offer is tied to an ‘Industrial Stability’ pact which amounts to a no-strike deal. Furthermore, the company’s commitment is only for the first year of the deal. Years two and three can be reviewed at any time by the company.
We want a fair pay deal that acknowledges the fact that the turnaround in the company’s fortunes over the last two years has been largely as a result of the hard work of employees.
Further outstanding issues are centered around protecting pensions, a plan for the company’s future and workplace issues. Royal Mail’s pension deficit has now been taken on by the government – a great example of the central tenet of capitalism: socialise the costs, privatise the profits. The pension deficit was caused to a great extent by the fact that successive governments authorised a contributions holiday for the employer from 1990 to 2003, allowing the deficit to balloon to £8 – £10 billion. The Final Salary pension scheme has now been closed to new starters and the union wants a deal on improving the Defined Contribution Scheme and protecting the Defined Benefit Scheme.
From 2010 the company and the union committed to a modernisation programme. Costs were cut, offices were closed and a lot of money was spent on new machines – the result has been huge profits for the company, but also increased pressure on staff in all areas of the business. Staff are now expected to do more with less. The size of delivery duties has increased, the volume of parcels is huge, so that most days the vans are full with bags of post and large packets, and although the volume of letters continues to fall, bulky magazines, catalogues and junk mail continue to grow. As the workload increases to unmanageable levels, so too does the pressure of the job, with some posties getting in early or working over their time for free in order to get the job done.
The scandal of privatisation
All of this is happening against the backdrop of the recent privatisation where around 600,000 people made some profits buying and selling shares which were said to have undervalued the company by nearly £1 billion. Who were shares sold to as these people made a quick buck? To the ‘institutional investors’ who see the ownership of Royal Mail as a longer term cash cow: sovereign wealth funds, such as that of Kuwait, the investment bank Goldman Sachs and various hedge funds who have a reputation for asset stripping companies, attacking the workforce and then selling them on.
This debacle makes a mockery of the Thatcherite utopia of a ‘shareholders’ democracy’. As with previous sell-offs, a small number of wannabe Gordon Geckos will make a few quid, but the newly privatised company will end up in the hands of the people who wanted them in the first place – the capitalist class. Ordinary people obviously don’t have the financial clout of a sovereign wealth fund or investment bank and with the average wage growing almost four times slower than prices, a flutter on the stock market is simply beyond the means of most people.
The Tory government is lining the pockets of the class it represents, this is no surprise. However, their aggression really only conceals their class weakness. They are scrabbling around for profit wherever they can find it – now raiding the apparatus of their own capitalist state. Even Thatcher wasn’t so desperate!
A win for Royal Mail workers in this dispute will be a key victory against the onslaught of cuts, pay freezes and reactionary welfare ‘reform’ that has been relentlessly visited upon working people in the UK and across the globe.
The Labour party is to be applauded for its refusal (for once) to condemn strikes; but it must go further and listen to its 2013 party conference, which passed a resolution for the renationalisation of the Royal Mail.
