The decision by postal workers, with the support of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), to found a rank-and-file committee is, by any stretch of the imagination, a truly historical event.
It is a
welcome development despite taking 36 years (the anniversary of my last set to
with the CWU bureaucracy). It now offers postal workers a way to fight against
the CWU Bureaucracy without one hand tied behind their backs.
I urge all
postal workers to join it and prevent what will be a huge betrayal by the
current CWU leadership. As was said in an article posted on the World Socialist
Website, “The committee will aim to mobilise workers against Royal Mail’s
attacks and lead a fight for an inflation-busting pay rise, a defence of terms
and conditions, an end to all job cuts and the overturning of victimisations.”
The betrayal
being organised by the CWU bureaucracy marks a new stage in its development
into an arm of corporate management. How long before Messrs Furey and Ward become
members of the board? Their betrayal is not down to being bad people or weak
this is the nature of the trade union bureaucracy worldwide.
Workers are
trapped inside “trade union” organisations, which have assumed the character of
corporatist entities controlled by petty-bourgeois functionaries like (Ward and
Furey) whose own interests are in no way connected to even a residual defence
of the rank and file’s share of the national income. The union leadership and
apparatus act as an industrial police force for Royal Mail management.
The article Growing
support for UK Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee, states “The formation of
the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee shows that Royal Mail workers can
break out of the confines of the CWU’s pro-company agenda and mount a direct
challenge to the profits diktats of the company. It is an example others must
follow. As the Committee’s founding resolution states, “Millions of workers in
the UK are waging the same fight in a strike wave ongoing since last summer.
This is part of an international struggle against global corporations and governments
seeking to impose the immense cost of pandemic corporate bailouts and rampant
inflation on the working class.”
Email
rmpw.rfc@gmail.com to contact and join the Postal Workers Rank-and-File
Committee.
