Royal Mail is expected to reveal record full-year profits of around £720million, up from £664million the previous year. Given Royal Mail's previous promise to shareholders to cut staff and escalate further attacks on postal workers, it is no surprise that it has offered a paltry pay rise of 2% with massive changes in working conditions.
Royal
Mail wants compulsory Sunday working; an additional 1.5% pay rise will be
directly linked to increased productivity. Royal Mail wants a reduction in sick pay, scrapping several
allowances, later start times, annualised hours and significantly different pay
for all new members, creating a two-tier workforce.
The only people surprised by Royal Mail's actions are the Communication Workers Union(CWU), who have bent over backwards to present the new Royal Mail management as a friend of postal workers and someone they can work with.
Over
the last two years, the union has collaborated with Royal Mail in imposing draconian
new changes in working conditions. When postal workers sought to oppose these
attacks, the union called off a strike ballot and began phoney negotiations. These
negotiations resulted in many dead and sick postal workers who were forced to
work during a lethal pandemic, with the union calling postal workers the "fifth
emergency service".
The
new national agreement (Pathway to Change) agreed between Royal Mail and the
CWU has led to a massive increase in productivity with huge amounts of packets
delivered, which meant a massive increase in profits, and at the end of last
year, £400 million was given to shareholders.
The
CWU has reportedly overseen record-breaking revisions, leading to hours cut,
longer walks, and utter chaos in numerous offices. According to one worker,"
Our office has just started
its new duties after a revision where deliveries are too big, the way walks
have been laid out is absurd, mail not being delivered for days and overall
morale varying from discontent to hilarity at the fiasco developing. Customer
service is non-existent, and turning this around seems impossible. Posties are
so fed up that mail is taken for a ride and then returned to be rethrown off
for the next day when the pantomime is repeated. Bigger walks, less time to do
them, photographing packets daily van checks before you go out, HCTs that are
not fit for purpose and a union that seems oblivious".[1]
Several Royal Mail delivery
offices took unofficial industrial action in opposition to the 'Pathway to
Change' national agreement. One such strike at the Invergordon delivery office was
taken to defend a temporary member whose contract was ended.
Amesbury
and Frinton delivery offices took strike action over the massive increase in
parcel delivery with cuts in staff leading to unrealistic delivery times. Workloads
have now reached breaking point at a large number of offices. At Wakefield
Delivery Office, West Yorkshire, the agreement rollout of a structural revision
resulted in 94% of the workforce voting it down after producing unachievable
workloads. Unofficial actions by postal workers have been left isolated by the
CWU leadership. Regarding the current pay dispute, the union has, instead of
calling an immediate strike ballot, will continue four-week negotiations behind
the backs of postal workers.
As
part of the CWU's supposed battle on pay, its London organisation has released
a leaflet entitled London Calling-Royal
Mail's Pay Betrayal To The Workforce. The leaflet insults the intelligence of
postal workers, as no postal worker believes Royal Mail has betrayed them. If
anything, large sections of postal workers conclude that it is their union that
has betrayed them and collaborates so much with Royal Mail that it is becoming
difficult to tell them apart.
This
treachery is not just confined to British unions. Trade unions all over the
world are carrying out similar policies? Embracing labour-management collaboration
and handing back to the employer's gains won by previous generations of the
working class.
To
defend their pay and conditions, Postal workers must break from the CWU and
establish a network of rank-and-file committees.
