British Postal Union Calls Off Strike

Five 24-hour strikes in mid-October over speedup, harassment, and lost jobs brought down media and government accusations demonizing British postal workers for potentially denying the public “their Christmas.” Unnerved, postal union leaders canceled further actions.

Franklyn Smith, a north London union rep, said members were “demoralized and devastated” by the decision, taken by leaders of the Communication Workers Union (CWU). A national strike of 121,000 postal workers had been threatened for November 5.

The union agreed to an interim deal providing “a period of calm” and guaranteeing that modernization “will be introduced with agreed job security and improved terms and conditions for postal workers.”

Union leaders expressed faith that the deal would introduce a “radically different culture” of trust between the union and Royal Mail management.

In 2007, postal workers took national strike action over similar issues, which were resolved by an agreement that cut a significant number of jobs. In return workers were promised a four-day week without loss of pay. Yet in the ensuing two years Royal Mail management has simply broken this agreement, “reverting” workers, particularly in London, back to five-day weeks without consultation.

More than 60,000 jobs have been lost following deregulation of the mail in 2004, leaving those remaining working harder and harder.

NO TRUST

In north London workplaces, the suspension of action has not led to trust. One week after the strike was called off, Royal Mail local managers were blaming backlogs on worker performance, denying overtime, and continuing bullying and harassment, with senior workers told they were not working to the required rate.

Postal workers in Britain earn on average about $500 a week and badly need the opportunities for overtime and working on rest days—now being withdrawn by management.

Since the strikes were called off, “Royal Mail has just been attacking us, far from ‘working together,’” Smith said.

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The continuing use at the local level of “executive action”—management’s unilateral imposition of change—undermines the CWU’s optimistic analysis. Other issues like “absorption,” in which postal workers are required to take on the work of absent colleagues, remain unsolved.

Not only has the situation massively increased the burdens on postal workers, it has also led to chaos in the sorting offices as mail piles up. Although postal workers’ guerrilla action over the summer—local one-day strikes in London and other areas—was blamed for the backlog, in fact absorption was hitting Royal Mail harder than any of the work stoppages.

OPPORTUNITIES LOST

Deregulation is forcing Royal Mail to struggle with a far-from-level playing field, as monsters like TNT, Europe’s second-biggest parcel company, skim off major contracts and leave Royal Mail with what is poetically known as the “final mile”—the local delivery which only RM is in a position to carry out. The only group to benefit from all this, predictably, is top management, with Royal Mail arch-boss Adam Crozier pocketing a $5 million bonus last year.

Most scandalous of all is the debacle of the postal workers’ pension. A 13-year pension “holiday,” in which management stopped paying into the pension plan, has led to a pension fund deficit of $12 to $17 billion.

Many postal workers now face ending their working lives with no pension scheme at all. As a workplace rep puts it: “No one’s explained it to us, no one’s really questioned why they did it. All they’ve said is ‘It’s happened, that’s it, and now we’ve got to pay for it.”

Smith said workers were angry at the opportunity lost.

“From a position of strength where we had power, we’ve now got no strength,” he said. “The day the strikes were called off, we were putting a lot of pressure on Royal Mail—we had them, so to speak—and within a few hours that had changed.”

Sheila Cohen is a member of the National Union of Journalists in the UK and the author of Ramparts of Resistance, about workers’ battles in the U.S. and the UK over the last 40 years. Order it.