THE CWU revealed yesterday that 9,360 post offices will close once Royal Mail is privatised and the inter-business agreement with the Post Office is ended.
In a poll 92% of sub-postmasters believe that they could not survive without Royal Mail business, which the Postal Services privatisation Bill now going through parliament excludes.
The CWU trade union general secretary Billy Hayes said yesterday ‘These figures clearly demonstrate the fears of sub-postmasters and mistresses about the fate of our cherished post office network.
‘Based on these projections, the post office network faces a greater threat than anyone previously dared believe.
‘Even the warnings of postal watchdog Consumer Focus – which warned last month that 2,000 offices could close under the Post Office Locals plan – fall short.’
There is nothing in the Hayes statement about fighting this threat to the Post Office, and the even greater threat to the Royal Mail by the Tory-led coalition’s determination to finish what the last Labour government started, the privatisation of Royal Mail.
Under its modernisation plans tens of thousands more jobs are to go, adding to the 60,000 jobs that have already been lost in Royal Mail.
To this total will be added the over 1,136 compulsory sackings that will result from the closure of two London Mail Centres at East London and South London, and the Rathbone Place Delivery Office.
These closures have been described by the London Regional Committee of the CWU as unprecedented – there is no hope of redundant staff being absorbed into other posts.
The response from the CWU leadership has been to complain that these closures are ‘not in accordance with the existing national agreements we have with the company’.
In fact, under the terms of the Business Transformation Agreement agreed by Billy Hayes and his deputy Dave Ward in 2010, the CWU has abandoned its opposition to the mail centre closure programme, and also accepted the lifting of the previous cap on the amount of junk mail postal workers had to deliver, and agreed to there being no upper limit on the delivery span.
Under the terms of this agreement the working life of postal workers has become a complete hell.
Under the drive for greater efficiencies, management has set completely impossible targets for workers to meet, with postal workers being forced to spend hours on delivery, working until they drop.
Coercion, harassment, bullying and victimisation are now commonplace in the ruthless drive to prepare the ground for privatisation. Management is throwing down the gauntlet to the CWU, preparing the way for privatisation, secure in the knowledge that Hayes and Ward have a long history of running from any kind of fight.
The time has come for this rotten Business Cooperation Agreement to be completely repudiated by the CWU.
Jobs, Mail Centres and Post Offices must be defended with national strike action and occupations to halt the privatisation of Royal Mail.
Victimisations must be rejected and be fought.
Those leaders like Hayes and Ward who refuse to lead such a fight must be removed and replaced by leaders who will fight for every job, every condition and for bringing down this government.
A general strike must be organised in the public and private sector to halt the privatisation threat by bringing down the Tory-led coalition and bringing in, not a Labour government that will attempt to carry on privatising, but a workers government that will end privatisation, expropriate the bosses and bankers and go forward to socialism.
