Postal strike faces sell-out

The postal workers' dispute faces a sell-out. The trade union movement will suffer a major historic setback unless CWU members take action unofficially, demand an emergency national reps' meeting to call their leadership to account, and mobilise for a "no" vote in the ballot which is due to be called on a deal cooked up on Friday night 12 October.

No details have been supplied of the deal. A joint statement by Royal Mail bosses and CWU leaders describes it as "agreed", but offers no details.

The joint statement says simply: "The agreed terms covering all the issues in the dispute will be considered by the union’s Executive on Monday [15th]. Both parties will make a further statement thereafter". It is signed by Adam Crozier, Chief Executive Royal Mail; Billy Hayes, General Secretary CWU; Dave Ward, Deputy General Secretary CWU; and somehow Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC, slipped his slimy little self in there too.

The build-up to this debacle was over a week of intensified pressure on the union leadership from Royal Mail, from the Government, from the courts, and doubtless, behind the scenes, from the TUC.

If you want to believe in miracles, you can suppose that after that week the Royal Mail bosses - who were visibly becoming more aggressive as the days went by - suddenly folded and accepted the workers' demands. In real life it must be certain that the ones who folded were the CWU leaders - who visibly become weaker and more overwhelmed as the week went on - and the deal is a rotten one.

For almost twenty years, since the defeat of the miners' strike and the crushing of groups like the dockers and the Fleet Street printworkers in the immediately following years, the postal workers have been the strongest battalion of the British trade union movement. They conducted the biggest dispute over that period, the 1996 strike. Until only a few years ago, postal workers accounted for one-third of all striker-days in Britain.

The Post Office, alone of all commercial enterprises, remained publicly-owned, and, until recent years, largely run as a public service rather than as an operation whose criteria are all set by profit-maximisation and market competition.

It is a certainty that the deal will involve heavy attacks on postal workers' conditions to bring them closer to the fully-marketised "race-to-the-bottom" ideal, and that - if the deal is not rejected - this big setback for the workers will be followed by a further and wide-ranging Royal Mail bosses' offensive.

The first step to the CWU collapse was the union cancelling the strikes it had called in Mail Centres and Delivery Offices - the main sectors - on Monday/Tuesday 15/16 October and Tuesday/Wednesday 16/17 October - in response to a court injunction.

The union also declared that "the injunction does not cover Airports and Separate Collection Hubs but because of the small numbers involved it was thought prudent to also withdraw this planned action".

That left a few fragments of the action still planned. The injunction itself was an example of the deadliness of the Tory anti-union laws continued in force by Blair and Brown, and how, if push comes to shove, they can be used by the bosses to illegalise almost any industrial action. According to BBC News, "the union had not given accurate figures for the number of staff affected by the strike - a legal requirement". Of course, in any large strike, in a workforce with any amount of turnover, and varying numbers of workers off sick or on holiday at any time, and complex shift patterns, it will pretty much always be possible for the employer to claim that the union's figures are inaccurate.

Rather than challenging the obviously contrived ruling, the union leaders immediately buckled.

They were already overwhelmed and out of their depth. Royal Mail had responded aggressively and quickly to the previous round of strike action - four days around the weekend 6/7 October - by, on 5 October, announcing the closure (for all workers, not just new starters) of their final-salary pension scheme on 5 October, the first full day of the recent round of strike action.

When workers returned after the four days, Royal Mail bosses unilaterally and without notice imposed new working hours - sometimes also involving loss of pay - and cried "disruption" at the scattered unofficial strikes in protest.

There are many reports of aggressive, hardline action by local bosses.

Then the New Labour government piled in. Gordon Brown told Parliament on 10 October: "This [dispute] has got to be settled by negotiations between the Post Office and the workforce...but there is no justification for the continuation of this dispute. It should be brought to an end on the terms that have been offered as soon as possible and I urge the workforce to go back to work."

Business minister John Hutton - the man who declared this summer that he wanted Labour to supplant the Tories as "the natural party of business" - echoed Brown. "This dispute has got to end. There is a perfectly decent offer on the table. It does not justify this type of industrial action. The fine details of whatever it is which separates the two sides should and can be sorted out around the negotiating table."

The union (CWU) leadership then stopped talking about the new round of strikes, starting 15 October - not cancelled it, just stopped talking about it - and instead put out a statement (10 October) saying mildly that: "CWU remains resolute in seeking an acceptable negotiated settlement. Elements of Royal Mail’s proposal remain unacceptable and we hope to resolve these outstanding areas through negotiation".

As if living in a dreamworld, the CWU leaders declared: "CWU believes the time is right for the Government to intervene in a positive way to resolve the dispute". Wake up, Billy Hayes! The government had intervened - solidly on the side of the bosses. "CWU remains committed to achieving an agreement", bleated Hayes. As if Royal Mail bosses weren't throwing in new punches, day by day! As if the postal workers were facing some minor, marginal difficulties, rather than a major offensive by the bosses to smash the strongest remaining area of trade union organisation in Britain!

The protest strikes? Please forgive us, whined the CWU leaders. "This morning’s unofficial action [10 October] was sparked by management’s imposition of unagreed changes, particularly over later starts, and reflects the frustration felt by postal workers at Royal Mail’s executive action".

Stop this sell-out! Continue the unofficial strikes! Call an emergency reps' meeting! Vote no to a rotten deal!