h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today I received a ballot paper from my Union, the CWU, asking me if I was prepared to take Industrial Action consisting of a strike. Without a seconds hesitation I crossed next to the box that said “YES”.

Recalling that during the last postal dispute a number of people here on h2g2 were interested in in the thread (which subsequently became a guide entry) in which I explained from a Postal Worker and CWU rep’s perspective what was going on. I thought I’d pre-empt things with a thread on ask about this.

Why is there a dispute?

We are in a strange situation. Our future as postal workers, and by extension as is the postal service that is enjoyed by ordinary people, is tied up entirely with the debate around privatisation. What it will look like, what the effects will be on postal workers, when and how it will happen.

Of course in the UK we have some of the most restrictive Trade Union laws in the democratic world. Unions are forbidden from engaging in “political strikes” even if that strike is directly linked to employment issues. So the CWU is not able to ballot it’s members against privatisation even if we so desired. At the same time we are a pragmatic Union, we have to deal with the reality of the situation and in that sense part of our job is to, industrially at least, be agnostic about the ownership of Royal Mail. We need to protect the interests of membership whomever owns the company.

So to that end our dispute is not against privatisation, but it is about the potential impact of privatisation on our jobs. To that end we want to secure a long term, legally binding, agreement with the company in the area of pay, pensions, job security and against outsourcing.

I am frankly unapologetic about the fact that my members enjoy decent terms and conditions. I don’t believe that constant races to the bottom in employment are a good thing. Why should it be lauded when good jobs that allow people to provide for their families get destroyed for low wage, part time alternatives?

If Royal Mail is to be privatised then we want, and expect that Royal Mail, and the government, will commit that there will be no race to the bottom on our terms and conditions. Strangely they are up for this but will only offer legally binding protections for three years. That will go by in a blink of an eye and we need and expect more. If venture capital companies have spent billions obtaining Royal Mail no doubt they will look to seek an immediate return on their investment, and the usual method for that is to attack terms and conditions and out source bits of the business. We don’t believe that will be in the interests of our members, nor in the interests of the public we serve.

On pay I have no doubt whatsoever that we will be presented as being “greedy” and “unrealistic” for pursuing a pay claim. The accepted wisdom seems to be that times are tough and therefore working people have no right to expect a decent pay rise. Somehow we are just lucky to be in a job and should put up with getting poorer in real terms year on year. But is that really right? Is it really reasonable that because other people are not getting decent payrises then we shouldn’t expect one regardless of how well our company is doing?

Let’s turn that on its head for a minute, imagine we had full employment and a booming economy. Big, inflation busting payrises were the norm. But Royal Mail was losing money hand over foot and heading down the toilet. Would anyone, accept us arguing that because in wider industry and society everyone was getting big payrises we deserve one even though our company was on the brink of bankruptcy?

Of course not, we’d be accused, rightly, of being greedy and short termist. We’d be told that what happens in other companies is irrelevant if your company has no money at all and is about to go bust. So why does this not go in reverse?

Royal Mail is successful, we made a £400 Million pound profit this year, £100 Million the year before. The company is growing and doing so because my members have worked hard, and accepted really difficult changes and transformation in the workplace. The deal we did with Royal Mail has worked and the business is transformed. I just don’t accept it, and I never will, that it is unreasonable to expect your wages to at least match inflation when your company is doing well.

Privatisation

Whilst our dispute is not about directly about Privatisation, we probably ought to talk about it here. Now obviously as a Postal Worker, a CWU official and a red you’d correctly guess I am pretty much 100% against it. I don’t think it will be good for anyone, except maybe some spivs in the city.

But I don’t think I am alone here. When a cause is supported by both the Daily Mail and the Guardian, UKIP and the Labour Party conference unanimously, The TUC and the Bow Group, by the majority of the UK population as I am I wonder if I might be onto something. I struggle to think who exactly privatisation is in the interests of.

Certainly not my members who want decent full time jobs, with good terms and conditions and job security. Certainly not rural communities who rely on a consistent and universal postal service. Certainly not the Post Office network (who all parties claim to support) which is struggling to survive due the stupid decision on the part of the government to seperate from Royal Mail (unique to any postal authority).

Maybe the shareholders of TNT, of the banks trousering millions, the Royal Mail senior management and the wealthy chums of the government and spivs in the city. If they are the only winners from a policy I am unashamedly against it with everything I have got.

We have already seen the government having to humiliating climb down from their previous position about how the Universal, six day a week, one price goes anywhere service. Fallon, the minster responsible, has had to admit he misled Parliament when he claimed it would take a decision of the commons to change the USO and it could actually be done by civil sevants and ministers by a “Statutory Instrument”.

Have a wild guess what a privatised Royal Mail will be lobbying the government on in secret once the privatisation goes through. I feel for anyone in Rural communities, or even just outside the centre of London.

I don’t even think the privatisation is economically literate within the terms the Government claim to be using. Royal Mail, despite our bad press over the years, has been mostly profitable over the years. We are certainly profitable now, and according to the glossy prospectus they have done for the privatisation likely to be in the future. That profit could, and should, be used to build schools and hospital. Or at the very least reduce the budget deficit.

We are told, ad infinitum, that the deficit is a grave threat to the country but selling a profitable Royal Mail actually increases the structural deficit. What seems to have happened is the this government has nationalised the debt of Royal Mail (in the pensions rescue) and now want to privatise the profit. Where is the sense in that? How does it benefit us a tax payers? Particularly if full time, tax paying postal workers are changed into unemployed ex postal workers by the new ownership. Tax down and benefit bills up.

For me the whole thing is a massive insult to us a postal workers, and us as citizens. I don’t think standing up for my rights at work is wrong, I don’t think standing up for the service we provide is wrong. For 500 years the Royal Mail has existed in service to the country. We are not now, nor have we ever been, perfect. We make mistakes. But be under no doubt things will get worse under privatisation.

I voted yes and I’m not ashamed. I’ll never stop fighting for my members, or for the service we provide the public.

FB

BTW, as a CWU official I am sure you can imagine I'm gonna be pretty busy over the next few weeks and months. I'll try and respond to questions, points and criticism when I can but I shan't always be available on here.

FB

Mol

I feel privatisation is wrong as everything that has been so far privatised has become profitable at and many timed due to public money being used.

The result will be at more cost to the user and creation of an unnaccoundable service. There will no doubt be mass redundancy as cheeper staff will be recruted, afterall it will just a be moneymaking business afterall.

The gouvernment are selling the family silver are they are running short of cash.

Your vote of No! is justified

I've posted a grand total of four letters this year, all business correspondence. I honestly can't remember the last time I hand wrote a personal letter - 2003 maybe? I can't see the trend in increasing e- communications changing much so I've got to question why taxpayers need to own an outdated letter delivery service. Sell it now while it still has residual value.

Sorry FB, civilisation moves on I'm afraid.

How many have you received?

Mol

Very little Mol. Thousands of junk mails though

Thanks for this, FB, I'll be watching with interest.

Deb

threats of fire service, electric power cut blackouts, gpo strikes, police service in tatters....1980s anyone?
I believe everyone has the right to a fair wage, benefits etc. world is turning though and public opinion is fickle thing and the private sector is waiting in the wings with very sharp teeth!

"Sorry FB, civilisation moves on I'm afraid."

Indeed it does, and you won't get any argument from me, or my union that letter post is declining. Though at a rate that will mean there is still a shed load for a long time to come. I suspect you received a whole lot more than 4 letters this year.

But whilst teh interwebz have no doubt impacted on people using the mail system for personal correspondence (only a fool would deny this) it has at the same time created a *massive* boom in the sending of small packets.

And e-commerce, remote selling and the like is here to stay. All the evidence and estimates are that whilst letters will have a slow decline, packets and logistics will boom. That is why Royal Mail has made money, and that is why there are future prospects of us being even more profitable.

FB

totally with you on all this Fb, although they have privatised the mail here too and so far it isn't bad from the customers' pov (I get quite a lot of mail) but I think the employees are having it tough.

I missed what happened aboout the pricing and the 6 day service though - can you either explain or point me to a summary of it elsewhere?

The so called drive to efficiency results in a broken service (maximising profit routes, cutting loss elements, reducing staff to a minimum, reducing wages to a minimum), profit leaving the shores, continued destruction of the big society fiction, greater burden on the welfare system, less money circulating in the economy, reduction in infrastructure, fragmentation & rule by the elite.

Historically civilisation was a method by the strong & mighty to take control of bigger & bigger resources (wealth, labour, power) ... it was of course needed. The fact that inequality has continued to widen demonstrates the victory of the elite ... but maybe it is an inevitability ... requiring a form of communal intelligence to break ... yes religion ... so lets all join hands and sing Cum Ba Ya ... now where's my spliff.

Honestly FB, I get very little direct mail. My company is very email driven, my banking is all online and so many companies prefer to interact through texts and email it is a rare thing for me to get a letter. Get loads of unsolicited crap though

Yes the Royal Mail is making a profit from a declining service as you acknowledge, which makes it the perfect time to sell it surely? That small packet business is already being nibbled at by private companies who provide a faster, more efficient service.

Example - I bought a cycle helmet this week, it arrived two days later after two emails confirming despatch and a delivery day, then a text telling me the delivery time to the hour. Royal Mail don't do that - (I'll refrain from saying RM deliver a shut notice a week later )

You know I'm sympathetic to the Royal Mail FB, but the service offered to customers has been declining for nearly thirty years whilst conditions for the posties have got worse. I look at the variety of suppliers in the parcels sector where prices are kept low by a competition which constantly innovates to improve customer service and there's no comparison with the letters service from RM. Parcelforce has been transformed in the competition with private sector suppliers and I think opening up the letter delivery arm of RM to the same competition would equally transform the service for consumers.

It's a time to embrace the possibilities that private sector investment will bring. Yes, protect the terms and conditions of employees, but so much of your OP is unquantified fear of change.

IMHO

This was interesting, thought I'd share - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n09/james-meek/in-the-sorting-office

phew!

- and all in a world dominated by eThis, eThat & eTheOther ?

I'm a postman's son. Ever since my Dad left the Navy he worked for Royal Mail.

( Royal Mail deliver letters, Parcel Force deliver the bog packets, the Post Office run the counters. )

So, growing up in the 70s ans 80s I know what it was like to need a strong union with its workers best interests at heart.
But I have also seen the same unions stab their members in the back.

I remember living through one strike when the parcel workers were out, and the mail workers went out in sympathy. I remember the weeks on end of no meat because we couldn't afford even butchers offcuts. I remember a birthday dinner when my dad had to borrow money from his disapproving parents just to put any food on the table.

And I remember the strike succeeding.

And then I remember the repercussions, and how the letter staff had to go out on strike. And I remember how the parcel staff did nothing.

When I got older, I worked for Royal Mail myself for a time, and I have seen the long term Union members going out on their rounds with one or two bags, while the new starters had upwards of thirteen.

I wish that I could believe in the benefit of unions, but I have seen first hand how currupt they can be. I have as a child seen them fold and stab their fellows in the back, and I have seen how they line their own pockets.

I wish I could say other, but I fear I must say: Physician, heal thyself.

When I was a postie in the 80s, we came out on strike as the mounting tide of junk mail we were delivering wasn't counting towards our bonus. The Union cut a deal whereby staff at the big city delivery offices got a bonus whilst we at the smaller offices got nothing.

Our Union Rep didn't have a round of his own, he was the "relief" postie who covered for anyone off sick or on holiday. This had the effect of him being free 50% of the time and only turning up for work as the rest of us returned from our first deliveries. We nicknamed him "Daisy" as in "some daisy worked, most daisy didn't".

FB seems thoroughly decent and possibly the CWU have changed, but in the 80s that union was rotten to the core.

>> the benefit of unions, but I have seen first hand how currupt they can be <<

Indeed but it has also been true for the "other side" ... but now the other side has surely won ... and maybe the victory of the unions was always bounded within limits & relatively minor on the great scale of things to exploit.

Oh yes, FB is a decent person. I know a lot of people involved in unions that are good people, because the idea of the unions is a good one. But, too often they are in the minority and fighting a losing battle