THE CWU trade union has agreed a ‘landmark’ agreement with Royal Mail.
CWU deputy general secretary Dave Ward said: ‘The agreement breaks new ground in the UK by incorporating extensive legally binding protections for employees alongside a commitment to improve industrial stability.’
The agreement includes a pay deal for three years that amounts to a 9.06% compound increase over the three years to 2016.
The CWU says: ‘The legal protections agreed for employees continue to a first review in January 2019 and include:
‘The employer will not outsource, sell or transfer any part of its business.
‘The employer will remain an end-to-end service provider and will not franchise out any part of its business or make any employee self-employed.
‘The employer will not engage any new employee on inferior terms and conditions (no two-tier workforce).
‘The collectively agreed terms and conditions of employees will not be worsened in any respect or changed unless amended by agreement.
‘The over-riding objective will be for the employer to deliver all future change without recourse to compulsory redundancy.
‘The employment model will remain predominantly full time and the agreed resourcing mix will be monitored on a quarterly basis.
‘The agreement also includes a strategy to grow parcels, retain letters and sustain and grow the USO. There will be improved efficiency coupled with incentive arrangements for employees, actions to deliver cultural change and a national review of workloads and resourcing.
‘It has also been agreed that both parties will create industrial stability with a re-launch of industrial relations arrangements and the introduction of mediation procedures alongside new governance arrangements.’
Mish Tullar, spokesperson for Royal Mail: ‘What both sides have agreed is a new framework to settle disputes called the “Industrial Stability Framework”.
‘What this involves is that both sides, where there is a dispute, will bring in mediators, instead of allowing things to escalate to strike action. If it can’t be resolved at a local level, then it gets pushed up at a national level for resolution. It means that the mechanisim is in place to avoid there being any local strike action. If there was industrial action at a local level then that would be in contravention of the agreement.’
As is usual, the CWU, after allowing the industry to be privatised without a fight, is proposing to sell its members at the cheapest rate possible.
9.06% over three years may well not even keep wage levels where they are now, since the official inflation rate may be much higher, if the housing bubble bursts again as is being predicted.
As well, the inflation rate for the basic food, heating and clothing items that working class families need and cannot do without, is already much higher than the general official inflation rate.
At the least, the union should have fought for an annual increase equal to the basic inflation rate plus the agreed sums equal to 9.06% over the three years. That would have at least have constituted a degree of progress.
As well the agreement stipulates that ‘The employment model will remain predominantly full time and the agreed resourcing mix will be monitored on a quarterly basis.’ It also agrees to redundancies.
This opens the way for 49.9% of the work force being part timers!
The ‘Industrial Stability Framework’ will be the means abolish the rights of branches to defend their terms and conditions of service, against nationally agreed targets. The agreement stipulates ‘improved efficiency coupled with incentive arrangements for employees, actions to deliver cultural change and a national review of workloads and resourcing’.
This process will see branches being closed and members being expelled, and then sacked when they resist the nationally agreed workload and ‘cultural’ changes for the worst.
This deal must be thrown out and a campaign begun immediately for real wage rises well above the inflation rate, for the renationalisation of the industry, and a new leadership for the union.
