On 5 November, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) abandoned the national strike action which its membership had supported by a majority of four to one in a ballot a month earlier. In making the decision, the CWU leadership effectively passed the initiative on a plate to a ruthless Royal Mail management which is determined to complete the casualisation of the workforce as a prelude to further privatisation. 

Over the last five years, Royal Mail bulk collection services have been progressively sold off to companies such as TNT and UK Mail under an EU directive which opened the market for bulk mail services in 2003 and for all services in 2006. Bulk mail companies collect and sort the mail before handing it over to the Royal Mail for the actual door-to-door delivery. They make the profit whilst the Royal Mail has to do the hard work. Over the period, 60,000 full-time jobs have gone as the Royal Mail ended a twice-a-day delivery and Sunday collection, and postal workers are now amongst the lowest-paid unionised workers in Britain, earning an average wage of about £16,000 per year. In February 2009, Royal Mail announced it wanted to cut its annual pay bill by £470 million, a step which required the loss of a further 16,000 full-time jobs, one in ten of the workforce. Staff are now recruited to either six-hour or four-hour part-time shifts, the prelude to the introduction of computerised walk sequencing machines which will sort mail into the order that they will be delivered in the morning, and which are a crucial part of the Royal Mail’s ‘modernisation plan’. Under threat now are both the universal delivery responsibilities of the Royal Mail, and with it, the single postage rate.

A round of local strikes during 2007 against bullying management resulted in national strike action over the summer of that year, and led to the current Pay and Modernisation agreement. However, in the two years since then, there has been no let-up in attempts by local management to force out full-time workers and replace them with part-timers – hence, after a summer of unofficial and official walk-outs, there was overwhelming support for national strike action. The weekend before it started, the BBC published a document leaked from the Royal Mail which set out the management strategy to break the CWU, one which the Labour government clearly supported. At one point the document says:

‘Through a mix of pressures bring union to the point where doing a deal on our terms is preferable to the alternative…But if they refuse, we have positioned things in such a way as there is shareholder, customer and internal support for implementation of change without agreement’

On 22 October, 42,000 sorting office staff and drivers came out at 30 key mail sorting centres; the next day 76,000 postal delivery workers walked out, actions repeated the following week. On the weekend before the first strikes, the Royal Mail announced that it would recruit 30,000 casual workers to deliver the subsequent backlog of mail. Adam Crozier, who received £1 million in 2008 and a three-year bonus of £3 million the previous year as Chief Executive of the Royal Mail, declared

‘we are absolutely determined to do everything we can to minimise delays to customers' mail…this year we'll have twice as many people on board, and we'll have them in place much earlier in the autumn’.

This was twice the number of casual workers normally recruited in the run up to Christmas and they were clearly to be used as a strike-breaking force. The Royal Mail and the Labour government worked hand in glove to undermine what was a solid strike. Labour Business Secretary Peter Mandelson said that the modernisation of the Royal Mail was a priority and labelled the industrial action as ‘suicidal’ and a ‘death wish’. The next stage of the industrial action was to be a national strike of all Royal Mail workers on 6 November. However, all action was suspended by the CWU on the night of the 5 November after an interim agreement was reached with the Royal Mail which supposedly safeguarded jobs and guaranteed continued negotiations until the New Year. The decision removed the pressure from Royal Mail management arising from a huge backlog of Christmas mail, and gave it breathing space to prepare its tactics for the next attack on postal workers.

Attempting to justify the capitulation in the face of an angry membership, CWU Assistant General Secretary, Dave Ward, said ‘We can now have a period of calm where we hope we can genuinely take forward modernisation in a way that puts the union at the centre’. The issue for the union leadership, which unanimously supported the interim agreement, is the extent to which union officials are consulted about Royal Mail modernisation, not its substance. The decision has cut the ground from under the feet of the postal workers, who in a number of sorting offices are now being allocated new rounds which they cannot complete within their working hours. They either have to work unpaid overtime or face disciplinary action. There has been no let-up from local management at all.

FRFI has constantly argued that trade unions in Britain are not fighting organisations of the working class: they are led by a labour aristocracy which has been bought off by British imperialism and who are in Lenin’s words ‘labour lieutenants of capitalism’. The actions of the CWU leadership confirm this standpoint. Those socialists who think that a new working class movement can be built primarily through work in the trade unions need to ponder the fate of Jane Loftus, president of the Postal Executive of the CWU who was a member of the SWP and yet who supported the capitulation. She faced a choice when the agreement was debated: side with the working class, or with the ‘labour lieutenants of capital’. She chose the latter: rather than changing the labour aristocracy she had become part of it, and was now prepared to represent its interests.

Inevitably postal workers will have to confront Royal Mail management in the New Year. FRFI urges its readers to support them. There has been growing opposition within the CWU to its continued affiliation to the Labour Party. Recently the union held a consultative ballot of members in London on whether to continue the link: 96% voted to break with Labour. This is a real step forward, and one which socialists should support. It shows that a section of low-paid workers are starting to move politically, and that they will be forced to confront a leadership which in the end is on the side of the ruling class

Bob Shepherd

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