CWU members have shown time and time again, their determination to defend their jobs, pay and conditions of service.
The recent strikes that have taken place are a continuation of a fight that began in 2007.
Postal workers in the best traditions of British trade unionism have fought Royal Mail and its supporters in the Mandelson/Brown government, and have been an inspiration to every worker in Britain today.
As the strikes have gone on CWU members have increasingly come to the inescapable conclusion that what is required to win their fight, is a Public Sector Workers Alliance to defend jobs and services,and a general strike.
The combativity and determination of CWU members has again been betrayed by their Trade Union leaders Billy Hayes and Dave Ward aided and abetted by Brendan Barber of the TUC.
From day one when the latest strikes began the Hayes/Ward leadership let it be known that they were calling the strikes reluctantly and if only Royal Mail would negotiate seriously they were up for a deal.
Over and over again they pleaded with Royal Mail to drawback from their confrontational actions and return to the negotiating table.
CWU members up and down the country knew that there could be no compromise with Royal Mail over job losses and speed up, as the very futures of all CWU members are at stake.
While their members were fighting to defend their union, the Hayes/Ward leadership were looking for a pretext to call off the struggle.
Enter Brendan Barber of the TUC. As the CWU increasingly came under attack from Royal Mail and the Mandelson/Brown government by the threat to recruit 30,000 scabs, Barber instead of calling for assistance to the CWU, offered his services as a mediator and would-be gravedigger of the CWU’s principled and popular fight.
What is offered to the CWU members in the Interim Agreement (I.A.) is an end of their national struggle since their leadership is to be locked into national modernisation agreements with Royal Mail.
Instead of a national fight, the focus of the I.A. seeks to push the fight to defend jobs, pay and conditions of service down to the local branches of the CWU, where one office will be pitted against another, in an effort to be the most efficient and so avoid the axe, with the CWU leaders intervening to discipline militants, no doubt, in their new role as junior partners to the Royal Mail management.
The very first page of the I.A. which the CWU is committed to, gives the game away.
It says ‘Royal Mail and CWU agree that aligning the interests of customers, employees and the company as a whole is a prerequisite for the successful modernisation of Royal Mail’.
Modernisation is the thinnest of euphemisms, its purpose is to attack jobs and increase the rate of exploitation to unbearable levels.
If the rights and jobs of postal workers can be modernised out of existence, then Royal Mail will appear ripe for another dose of modernisation, in the form of privatisation.
Further on the I.A. says ‘Both parties have also agreed to accelerate and complete the modernisation programme’. CWU members are to have no respite, in the attacks on their jobs and conditions.
The I.A. states that all industrial action will be suspended during the intensive talks that will take place between now and January 2010. And that there will be no return to the status quo in regard to the unagreed revisions, imposed by Royal Mail by executive action, the very dictatorial actions that sparked off the strikes in the first place.
On the question of local disputes the I.A. states ‘Both Royal Mail and the CWU agree that by far the best way to introduce change successfully is by agreement’. Royal Mail do not want a union that fights for its members interests, but one that is like a nodding dog in the back window of a car.
If agreement cannot be reached, they will revert to type and impose change through executive action.
Here is a gem: ‘If Royal Mail believes people are not working normally this will be raised with the union before any action is taken against employees’.
The CWU is to be an overseer, berating its members to work harder, for the good of the Company, of course.
Much of the rest of the I.A. carries on in a similar vein, with vague promises that the CWU will be involved in the introduction of so-called ‘Modernisation’.
What is crystal clear is that Hayes and Ward, with the assistance of Brendan Barber of the TUC, have betrayed the struggle of CWU members to defend their Union, their jobs and their conditions of service.
They have capitulated to Royal Mail and the Mandelson/Brown government. Now is the time to select a new leadership in the CWU.
It will not be long before postal workers will again be fighting to defend their futures.
This time it must be under a leadership that will not betray its members,to keep a cosy relationship with Royal Mail and the Mandelson/Brown government.
CWU members will quickly learn these lessons: That it is not enough to fight in a determined way. You must have a leadership that is prepared to lead the fight and not cave in when they are in strong position.
Bob Bolton
Chairman, South Central No1 CWU Branch
