WITH the result of the CWU Royal Mail industrial action ballot due on Thursday, the bosses are getting ready for action, while the position of the CWU union leadership is that it has no intention of calling all out strike action, and that the ballot is more about getting Royal Mail to negotiate seriously with the union than anything else.
However, while the union side prepares for a new round of talks, the management is continuing with its war talk, and is preparing a major struggle, comparing it with the 1984-85 miners strike. The Royal Mail management is boasting to the media that it has 6,000 managers organised for strike breaking, and that it has a raft of other measures prepared, which at this stage it is not prepared to make public, for a struggle that it publicly estimates will last for three months.
The union has responded to this onslaught by stating that this is a ‘scare tactic’, of which it is taking no notice.
No doubt, after the vote is made public on Thursday, the CWU will invite Royal Mail to commence serious negotiations.
The management are however confident, or even determined, that there will be industrial action of come sort. After all they have made an offer to the workforce that is completely unacceptable.
The management does not intend to make any concessions to the CWU, which will be forced by the Royal Mail’s refusal to make any meaningful offer to call some limited form of industrial action.
This will then see whole regions of the CWU refusing to touch strike-bound mail that Royal Mail transfers for sorting, and before the CWU leaders have time to figure out what is happening, tens of thousands of workers will be out on strike, with Royal Mail bringing privateers to strike-break.
Yesterday the government’s regulator, Postcomm, confirmed that it was asked on May 2 by Royal Mail to lift its financial liability for delays to the delivery of mail caused by industrial action.
Postcomm said that it has studied the request but will only reveal its answer after the result of the ballot is known on Thursday.
There is no doubt that Postcomm will give Royal Mail everything that it wants.
In its request to Postcomm, Royal Mail explained: ‘If Royal Mail becomes unable to move its modernisation plans forward for fear of triggering substantial financial penalties, everyone will ultimately be disadvantaged. Under these circumstances Royal Mail would fail in its drive to become an efficient operator and would be unable to keep up with market developments.’
Royal Mail observed that ‘Postcomm also, rightly, requires Royal Mail to have detailed contingency plans in place to mitigate and manage the impact of any industrial action that arises.’
So while the CWU is hoping that peace and reasonableness is about to break out, the opposite, a planned battle and a war is being prepared against it by Royal Mail, in order to casualise and privatise the industry.
If that were to happen, the bosses would be cock a’ hoop, and Premier Brown, now posing as the iron Prime Minister will have started his term with a war against the postal workers, to show the whole working class just who the boss is.
Facing this situation, the CWU must make preparations to win what is a serious struggle.
This means that the leadership must be prepared to call national strike action, and to form a public sector alliance that will strike in its support.
With the civil servants facing mass sackings and the NHS facing reconfiguration and privatisation, the public sector is already up in arms.
The CWU must demand a special meeting of the TUC to establish that if it is forced to call national strike action by Royal Mail and the government, the TUC will call out all of its affiliated trade unions in its support and bring down the Brown government to go forward to a workers government that will carry out socialist policies.
CWU leaders who are not prepared to fight for this policy should resign and make way for leaders who will. There is too much at stake to do otherwise.