After keeping the membership in the dark for months about negotiations with Royal Mail bosses, the CWU postal leadership has finally announced a deal with which is hopes to conclude the latest national dispute with management. On the CWU website (www.cwu.org/news/archive/deal-brings-pay-and-job-security-for-postal-workers.html) the leadership trumpets the deal as "bringing pay and job security for postal workers". In reality it brings anything but. As a London postal worker told Workers' Liberty, the deal actually lays the framework for further lay-offs:
"I had been told that it involved closure of 50% of mail centres, but no such figure is in there. The deal looks at the ways that such closures might be implemented, but there is no information about whether closures are taking place, or where, or how many. There are lots of words about "rationalisation" which indicates they want to make cuts, but no information. Likewise, they indicate they want to cut jobs, but no figure on how many jobs to go."
As for securing pay for postal workers, the deal offers no serious improvement on that front either: "The media are talking about a 7% pay increase over 3 years. But there was no pay increase last year, so it comes out at 7% over 4 years, which is even less." In a situation where the IMF is expecting inflation to rise rapidly over the coming years, a deal that locks the union into three years of extremely modest pay rises is a recipe for real-terms pay cuts for posties. The media are trumpeting a so-called 'lump sum' which will be paid to postal workers in return for accepting the deal. But this meagre 'lump' has strings attached - which effectively mean accepting redundancies - and it will be spread out, again, over three years.
At the moment, workers across the whole service receive the same basic rate. But under this deal, workers will receive different pay depending on which part of the service they work in. The effect of this will be to help management drive wedges between different sections of the workforce.
The deal is bad on junk mail and deliveries too:
"At the moment for junk mail we get paid a certain amount per item. Very little really, but it can mount up if you do a heavily residential delivery round. That will be replaced by a payment of £20.60 per week for everyone in deliveries. But they are also removing the cap on how many junk items can be delivered a week. Also the ban on junk mail deliveries in the run-up to Christmas is going to be got rid of too. So if you were on a residential delivery round you will be worse off money-wise, and you could get slaughtered, workload-wise." The deal purports to promise a reduction in the working week. But it's a reduction of just one hour, and it won't come in for another two years.
Aside from laughably empty words about Royal Mail being committed to good industrial relations and health and safety, the deal contains little else of substance. In particular, it fails to address questions of private competitors and "downstream access" to mail. It also offers nothing on the question of Royal Mail's £10bn pension deficit.
This deal is a scandal - it was cooked up behind the backs of the workers who made huge sacrifices to bring the bosses to the negotiating table, and it offers them less than nothing. The national strike in the post in late 2009 was strong and powerful. Instead of developing it, piling on the pressure, and organising a clear set of positive demands and a strong timetable for long-term action, the CWU leadership ran it into the ground, through a mixture of incompetence and political commitment to social partnership. The leadership has only been able to conclude such a powerful strike movement as that with such an insulting deal as this by organising a humiliating climb-down and de-mobilising the membership by stringing out negotiations over months, in secret.
The only good thing about it is that the NEC did not vote unanimously to accept it (the CWU report says the vote was merely "overwhelmingly" in favour). Postal workers should do better than their leaders - and vote to reject the deal wholesale.