Royal Mail backs down on sell-off

Submitted by AWL on 1 December, 2002 - 10:56

By a postal worker

Royal Mail has been forced to back off from its attempt to sell off the Post Office's Cash Handling and Distribution (CHD) section to Securicor, after the workers under threat delivered a resounding 95% "yes" vote for industrial action.

At first Royal Mail bosses proposed that it would restrict the privatisation to about half of the originally intended 2,600 workers - cash processing workers, but not drivers. The workers' union, the CWU, rejected this divisive offer and, faced with an imminent strike by the CHD workers, Royal Mail backed down on its privatisation plan. The CWU had threatened to extend the ballot to other postal workers. Royal Mail also feared a review of the bid by the Competition Commission. And the bosses are under political pressure to stop a strike and keep the firefighters isolated.

The climbdown is unlikely to be the end of the struggle. In the negotiations last week, Post Office managers claimed that even if the CHD operation was kept "in-house" they would "require a reduction of between 900 and 1000 jobs, within 12 months, primarily in cash centres." And CHD is not the only part of the Post Office that management want to see privatised.

We need to use this victory to argue for the return of Romec (engineers) to Royal Mail, and for opposing any further privatisations.

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