LAST THURSDAY at 2pm as the postal workers came out on their 48-hour strike, the PCS civil service union sent a special message to the postal workers.
Signed by Mark Serwotka, General Secretary, and Janice Godrich, National President, the letter said that they were ‘writing to offer the full support and solidarity of PCS members for the strike by your members in Royal Mail starting today. . .
‘In common with your members PCS members are also fighting to protect their living standards and working conditions. Like you we are determined that those who work hard to serve the public are paid a fair wage.
‘Best wishes and good luck.’
To be meaningful ‘full support’ has to mean strike action.
It would obviously be much better if, instead of continuing with their round the clock talks with the Royal Mail to try and wear their members down, to the point where they will be able to put the current unacceptable offer out to ballot, the CWU leaders arranged to see the PCS leadership to organise a public sector alliance to come out on strike alongside the postal workers.
However, as the CWU leadership have made crystal clear, time and time again, their aim is not to win this struggle with Royal Mail to safeguard the terms and conditions of service of their 160,000 members.
In fact the top union leaders were prepared to put the current ‘unacceptable’ offer out to ballot after the end of the four weeks of secret talks.
Their aim is to negotiate a settlement that will give Royal Mail what it wants in terms of flexibility, wages and pensions, but with a few very minor concessions in it, that can be used to try and sell it to the majority of the membership.
Thus in their counter-offer, the CWU leaders told Royal Mail that they were willing to accept an around inflation rate pay increase for the next two years. The word ‘around’ is code for a below inflation rate ‘rise’, that would in fact be a straightforward wage cut.
The counter-offer accepted that the Royal Mail could not carry on with the current pensions arrangements, including a heavy hint that a two tier pensions arrangement was acceptable. The same counter-offer refused to demand that the government make good the many years of pensions holiday that Royal Mail enjoyed at the expense of the workers.
There is no way that this spineless leadership would demand of Brown that their members should have parity of treatment with the Northern Rock bankers, who the government showered with billions of pounds.
And as for flexibility, the CWU leaders stated that they were just as ready, as they had been in the past, to give the Royal Mail almost everything that it wanted.
This is why the current talking around the clock, at the same time as the membership is taking part in two 48-hour strikes and then rolling strikes, is an attempt to wear the membership down by marching them up and down the hill, to soften them up for a ballot on Royal Mail’s offer.
CWU members must insist through their branches, area and regional organisations that the CWU leaders take up the PCS on its offer of ‘full support’.
Both union leaderships should meet together to organise indefinite strike action against the common enemy, this bankers government led by Gordon Brown.
What is required to win this dispute is a public sector general strike that will bring the Brown government down and prepare the way for the trade unions to form a workers government.
This will expropriate the bankers and capitalists to safeguard the jobs, wages, working conditions and basic rights of the working class, as well as repealing the anti-union laws.
Now is the time to demand action throughout the public sector. Don’t let the CWU leaders wear you down.