LAST Friday, the leadership of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) finally revealed to their members in Royal Mail (RM), details of the treacherous sell-out deal they had reached with RM management 7 days before.
A ballot of 115,000 members of the CWU voted for strike action by 97% in July 2022 over pay and attacks on their conditions, with the CWU general secretary, Dave Ward, insisting that the union would only accept an ‘inflation-based, no-strings pay award’.
This massive vote was followed by CWU members taking 18 days of strike action in the second half of 2022 against a 2% pay increase imposed on them by RM bosses.
Despite all his fine words about only accepting an inflation proof no-strings settlement, the CWU leaders have caved in completely to Royal Mail.
On pay, the deal they have agreed has been declared to be a 10% increase spread over three years. When the details of the increase are examined it becomes even worse. The 10% includes the 2% pay increase already imposed on postal workers last year plus a 6% increase this year, followed by a further 2% next year.
To sweeten the deal and make it more acceptable to CWU members, Royal Mail has graciously included a miserable one-off unconsolidated £500 ‘bonus’ for postal workers. Another sweetener, one that has been enthusiastically greeted by the CWU leaders, is an agreement that CWU members will have a 20% share in RM profits.
Andy Furey, CWU acting deputy general secretary, boasted on GB News yesterday that this was ‘quite unique, we believe, and we believe that it’s an opportunity for members to share in the success of Royal Mail’.
With Royal Mail continually declaring massive losses on its postal service, no postal worker will be holding their breath in anticipation of anything other than sharing the pain of poverty level wages and increased attacks on their working conditions.
In this deal, the CWU leadership have completely accepted the need of Royal Mail to implement the changes to conditions that their members overwhelmingly rejected last year.
They have agreed to changes to start and finish times meaning the working day will be spread out to allow for extended deliveries throughout the day, while new employees will be on contracts that force them to regularly work on Sundays.
Current employees will be asked to ‘volunteer’ for Sunday working, with the threat that if they don’t, ‘Royal Mail reserves the right to use alternative resourcing arrangement.’
While the deal includes a no compulsory redundancy agreement, this only lasts until April 2025, and in the meantime Royal Mail will still make around 10,000 redundancies.
Royal Mail is achieving its redundancies through driving workers out through poverty wages and atrocious working conditions and feels no need at present for compulsion.
Throughout this bitter lengthy dispute, that CWU leaders are so desperate to end by capitulating to the bosses, there has been a vicious campaign of victimisation against strikers by the management in an attempt to intimidate them into giving up.
During the course of 18 days of strikes, hundreds of local CWU reps and members have been suspended or sacked.
Under this deal, Royal Mail has agreed to a ‘fully independent review’ of their cases – in other words the union is handing their fate over to some ‘independent’ board instead of insisting that any worker sacked or suspended be reinstated immediately.
Last year, at the start of the dispute, a CWU spokesperson told the press: ‘These proposals are about dismantling a 500-year-old service and destroying the lives of those who serve it. Make no mistake – Royal Mail bosses have just declared war on your postie.’
Now, the CWU leaders have declared surrender!
Postal workers have shown their determination to fight against a brutal management backed up by a Tory government that has declared war on the entire working class.
Postal workers must vote no to this rotten deal and build a new leadership in the union that will call a national strike and demand the TUC immediately organise a general strike to bring down this Tory government and bring in a workers government that will nationalise the basic industries, kick out the privateers and bring in a socialist planned economy.
