Workers' Liberty

GENERAL CONFERENCE

The main contentious issue at the Conference was that of the relationship between the CWU and the Labour Party. The debate came in two parts. Firstly in the policy section of General Conference we discussed an emergency motion from London postal branches on the reults of the review of postal services recently concluded by the Government (at CWU request). The motion called for a ballot of the members by next March on whether we funded the Labour Party at the next General Election if they failed to address issues of the liberalisation of postal services, post office counters closures and the post office pension scheme that were in the review. This motion was remarkably similar to an Emergency Motion submitted by the NEC. It was supported by the national leadership and was carried.

The second stage of the debate of our relationship with the LP came in the Political Funding section of the agenda. The first motion discussed was a Socialist Party motion calling for dissafiliation and for us to support a New Workers Party. This was overwhelmingly defeated (approx 10 to 1). The point was made in debate that if we were going to use the link between the LP and the CWU as a lever in negotiations on the future of the Post Office in the coming year (along the lines of the emergency motion described above) then we should not dissafiliate now.

Another motion discussed in the political funds section was an SWP initiated "democratise the link" motion that call for the CWU to support candidates in elections from organisations on the left as well as Labour candidates. During the debate a delegate made the point that we had passed policy the previous year to threaten a ballot of the membership on our relationship to the LP if Labour did not deliver and we had not enacted that. So he said, what stopped us renaging on this years threat as we had on last years? Nevertheless the "democratisation" motion was seen as "backdoor dissafiliation" and was defeated in the same proportion as the SP motion.

Two motions that contained criticism of the LP but were pro affiliation were not reached. The first was one from the NEC that called for a review of the balance of the political fund money spent on affiliation fees to the LP and that on and wider political campaigning.It also called for us to only support MPs who supported CWU policy. This motion had been promoted by socialists on the Political Committee of the NEC as an attempt to use the link more proactively. Another composite motion that was not reached called for the CWU to campaign to reverse the Bournemouth rule changes that took away LP Conference democracy. Despite the CWU delegation to LP Conference voting for these changes in 2007, the NEC was due to support this motion if it had been debated.

In the Rules Revison section of the Conference an attempt to create two levels of political levy, one with an affiliation contribution to a political party and one without, was roundly defeated as divisive and anti political. Some in the Union had suggested we should split the political fund in two - one affiliated and one unaffilated - as a way round the unpopularity of the LP and the fact that hundreds of members had opted out of the political levy altogether after the strike last year.

TELECOMS CONFERENCE

There were several contentious issues at the Telecoms section of CWU Conference this year. Firstly the issue of pay and grading for B2 grade field engineers in BT OpenReach. The CWU had submitted a claim to Openreach management for an increase in grading for multiskilled customer service engineers and had been negotiating this for the last year. This demand itself was developed over the last few years due to a variety of factors - the ceasing of the previous lucrative (for some) productivity bonus scheme, increased productivity pressure and variations in availability of overtime. Despite all these pressures management had dimissed the CWU case and had even suggested the result of the review would lead to mass downgrading! At Conference there were two motions, one "harder" position of calling industrial action by August if our claim was not met, or a "softer" position of calling a Branch forum to discuss our strategy on this issue for the coming year. The motion calling for a forum was carried, despite many engineering branches voting for action in August (all grading issues are discussed by all constituencies, engineering, clerical and operator)

The second contentious issue was the matter of the new performance managemnet system BT has introduced in the BT Operate division (and intend to roll out to other divisions). This basically introduces formal performance management procedures where there were prevuiously only informal ones before you reached a formal stage. Whilst the informal procedures were unpopular for being used and abused by managers who wanted to pick on people the consequence of only having the formal procedures are that it can lead to more and quicker dismissals. This issue is still the subject of negotiation between BTand the Union despite the new process being rolled out already. The issue now is whether Managers at local level will be instructed to use them as a matter of course or whether they will hold back. The Union has a policy of no compulsoy redundancies but if such a procedure was enacted in a draconian way it would lead to many staff being dismissed whose performance would be percieved as average.

The last contentious issue (and probably the most immediately important) discussed at Conference was that of the review of the two BT pension schemes. The Company had announced a review of both schemes a couple of weeks before Conference. It was therefore the subject of emergency motions. The first was from the Telecoms Exec which basically gave minimal assurances on the bottom lines in negotiations.Several other motions from branches were submitted that would have tied negotiators down more. Included in these were the demands that; there would be no agreement on benefits that was worse than currently existed; that any increase in contributions would only be acceptable if there was an equivalent increase in benefits; and a demand that those who belonged to the inferior money purchase scheme the BT Retirement Plan should gain access to defined benefits suchas those enjoyed by the members of the PT Pension Scheme, a final salary scheme. The Executive motion was carried (and therefore all other motions fell) on a tide of "trust the executive" despite many branches having reservations.

The BTPS has been closed since 2002 and the 12,000 new entrants taken on since then only have access to the inferior BTRP scheme. The BTPS is the largest private sector pension scheme in the UK. The outgoing lead Telecoms negotiator for the Union threatned that any attempt by BT to impose changes that are not agreed by the Union would lead to a national strike. The key thing now is for branches to demand a Special Conference on BT pensions once it is clear what the company' is proposing.