A BALLOT of CWU members announced this week showed a vote of 94% in favour of a ‘legally binding contract’ between the leadership of the union and Royal Mail.
CWU deputy general secretary Dave Ward welcomed the deal as ‘ground-breaking’, claiming the union had ‘achieved extensive and unprecedented legally binding protections for employees that not only strengthen their job security but also shape the values and principles that the Royal Mail Group will operate under as a private organisation’.
Ward continued: ‘The pay deal is at the very top of the range in either the public or private sector and the commitments to legal protections and industrial stability changes the dynamic of privatisation. The agreement bucks trends in UK employment and means Royal Mail, as a private company, cannot adopt the type of employment model and practices that are undermining workers everywhere. Although we retain the right to strike, a fresh approach to industrial relations will help create industrial stability, and new governance arrangements will increase CWU influence in the day-to-day running of the business.’
So Ward and Billy Hayes (CWU general secretary) have created a new ‘dynamic’ for the sale of public utilities to profit-seeking privateers – in fact, postal workers may be forgiven for wondering why the union opposed privatisation of Royal Mail for so long; after all, according to Ward, it is now something to be positively welcomed, a brave new world where postal workers have legally protected rights that are placed before the profits of the speculators who bought up shares in the company at a knockdown price.
This ‘contract’ also purports to guarantee the universal delivery service along with no outsourcing of services, with the added bonus that the union will have an ‘influence’ in the running of RM in the interest of industrial stability.
Where the whole thing falls down is in the actual details of this legally binding contract.
Item 10.4 states that RM can tear up this document at any time if any of the following circumstances apply: namely, if the government decides RM is no longer the sole universal service provider or if the agreement runs against any legal, regulatory requirement.
In other words, this ‘contract’ only has force as long as the government allows it. Any change in government policy relating to postal services will render it obsolete and any protection for CWU members will evaporate.
Not just the government can make this legally binding contract a worthless bit of paper; the agreement makes clear that if RM has ‘reasonable grounds’ for believing that ‘any part of the business to which this protection applies has ceased to be, or is likely to cease being financially sustainable’ then all the protection it offers will be scrapped.
This disgusting charade of a legally binding agreement which safeguards the future of postal workers is being promoted by Hayes and Ward as the way forward for all workers facing privatisation – don’t fight it, just get an agreement that can be torn up at a moment’s notice either by government policy or because management decide it’s getting in the way of profits.
This legally binding agreement has been sold to CWU members by a leadership that has betrayed the fight against privatisation and has shown itself willing to betray the entire membership in return for the promise of some kind of ‘partnership’ deal with the employer, where the right to strike is ‘retained’ but where ‘there is a fresh approach to industrial relations’, ie where the CWU leaders roll over in front of the bosses’ requirements.
This deal solves nothing for postal workers who will continue to face speed-up and cuts.
Hayes and Ward have given RM management a blank cheque to carry on with the support of the union leadership who will undoubtedly discipline branches that take action to defend their members under the cloak of preserving this rotten deal and the ‘fresh approach to industrial relations’.
Having consistently avoided any fight against privatisation, the CWU leadership have now come out in open support of it.
The only thing they are good for is the sack and replacement by a leadership prepared to fight for the renationalisation of RM without compensation, since the industry was virtually given away to the bosses.
