THE CWU stands absolutely united in its anger at the Royal Mail bosses and the ruling class’ High Court following Wednesday’s ‘outrageous’ decision to invalidate the record 97% turn-out and vote for strike action, with its overwhelming ‘Yes’ vote.
The court ruled the strike action illegal, alleging that the working class had been fooled and/or intimidated into voting for Christmas strike action by trade union officials!
In fact, Royal Mail and the High Court have insulted not just all Royal Mail workers, but the working class as a whole, with the court’s acceptance of Royal Mail ‘evidence’ that the record 97% vote for strike action was not a decision of the workers at all, but a fraud, the product of pressure by the union leaders inspecting ballot papers on site and pressurising workers to vote ‘yes’.
What an insult to the working class! The courts and the bosses are peddling the lie that, essentially, the working class is a gang of sheep just waiting to be herded into the appropriate pen by trade union officials.
The verdict of the different areas of the CWU to this ruling class lie has been unanimous.
From the North East division – ‘This verdict is the establishment sticking together to throw democracy in the bin.’
From North Wales/North West – divisional rep Ian Taylor condemned the company’s manufactured claims, insisting that the union’s ‘Vote Yes’ campaign had been ‘brilliant’.
Members would, he predicted, be ‘extremely angry’ at the verdict of the court, commenting: ‘From what I’ve heard so far, these sound like highly spurious reasons.
‘I didn’t hear of one single complaint from my division – so that’s not one single complaint from about 20,000 members.’
Down in London Martin Walsh, divisional rep for the capital, dubbed the judgement ‘a political decision’. ‘Members will be very angry that management have taken their own workforce to court,’ adding that, despite the ruling, ‘the issues here remain the same and we will not accept what the business is trying to do to our members.’
South Wales/South West divisional rep Andy Nash was in Bristol Mail Centre when the judge’s verdict was announced and he reports that ‘the unit reps and the area rep were incensed’ when they heard it.
The CWU should recall its conference at once and renew its support for the strike action.
Not only that, it should now invite other sections of the working class to show their support with solidarity action.
The anger that CWU members are showing after their treatment at the hands of the Royal Mail and the courts is shared by the working class as a whole.
It has seen its living standards shattered in the last 10 years of huge cutbacks, wage cuts, pauperisation, food banks, and a housing crisis that has put thousands of workers onto the streets.
The fact that the postal workers are willing to come out at Christmas and are not intimidated by the fact that the ruling class is holding a general election speaks volumes, and spells out that the working class is not enamoured of a parliament that has stood idly by while it has suffered 10 years of super-austerity!
The working class has had enough. It is ready for action and does not put bourgeois elections at the top of its agenda.
In fact, railworkers and hospital workers throughout the UK are also taking strike action this Christmas.
This is why the CWU must recall its conference, renew its decision to take strike action, and invite the rest of the working class to join it in a general strike.
Now is the time for the organisation of a general strike to bring down the government and to bring in a workers government.
This will be based on workers councils that will nationalise the banks and the major industries and organise the productive forces in an economic development revolution that will provide millions of jobs and homes that will bring a better life for all.
This is the way forward!
