Myths of the Royal Mail strike

[Magda Hassan]

Myths of the Royal Mail strike

posted by lenin

As a certain amount of contrived hysteria over the coming national postal strike circulates, there are two questions of absolute importance to bear in mind. What does Royal Mail's management want? And what does the government want? One part of the answer to these questions was furnished by BBC Newsnight last week (see report here), after an internal Royal Mail document was leaked to the programme. Entitled 'Dispute: Strategic Overview', the document lays out the plan for forcing the union to accept Royal Mail's terms for 'modernisation'. If the union did not accept Royal Mail's terms, management would just proceed to implement them regardless. The upshot of a complete success by Royal Mail management in this dispute would be the effective de-recognition of the union: forcing through major changes without negotiation with the workforce is exactly what companies without union representation are able to at liberty. This strategy, the document reveals, had the government's approval.

So, this is the first point: when you hear government ministers urge the CWU to 'return to the negotiating table', the reality is that Royal Mail management are the ones refusing to negotiate, with government backing. The business secretary and prince of the Brighton prom, Lord Mandelson, has already tacitly acknowledged the existence of the document, and ruled out the use of ACAS to arbitrate the dispute. The CWU has made repeated overtures, which have been rebuffed. This tendency on the part of Royal Mail's management to ignore conciliation and adopt bullying tactics is one reason why the vote for strike action was so overwhelming: 76% voted 'yes' for strike action.

In this connection, bear in mind what a future in Royal Mail without strong union representation would mean for a postal worker. It has been announced that Royal Mail has scrapped its anti-bullying week. The reason why this measure, among others, was introduced in the first place was because Royal Mail's management culture is one of the most retrograde in the whole of UK industry. Not only is the use of bully-boy management typical of the way Royal Mail handles disputes. It has long been part of the culture of management at sorting offices and depots across the country.

In 2001, an inquiry into Royal Mail's industrial relations by Lord Sawyer, Nicholas Underhill QC, and Ian Borkett of the TUC, was initiated by both the CWU and Royal Mail management to find ways to reduce the frequency of conflict (you can read the full pdf document here). This was after a series of unofficial actions brought sections of Royal Mail to a standstill - 95% of work days lost in 2000-1 were due to unofficial strikes beginning locally and then spreading through wildcat action. The report started from the assumption that workers' militancy was the problem to be averted, expressed disapproval of excessive worker involvement in managerial tasks, and was sympathetic to Royal Mail's 'modernisation' project. Yet, its findings highlighted an abysmal "authoritarian" culture in Royal Mail management, with managers insisting that workers ask for permission just to go for a slash or get a drink of water. Management knew how to apply punitive measures, even where they were inappropriate, but not much else. More senior managers, they found, were of a similar mentality. They refused to punish or confront "unacceptable behaviour" by frontline managers, evidently because they didn't find such behaviour to be "unacceptable".

What kind of behaviour might be hinted at in this cool terminology? Well, in 2003, it was disclosed that some 20% of staff had suffered bullying in the form of physical and mental abuse. Sometimes the abuse has taken on racist dimensions. In 2002, management had to make an unprecedented pay out of £100,000 to the family of a black postal worker who was driven to suicide after racist bullying by a group of managers. In another significant case, Mahmood Siddiqi was awarded almost £180,000 after it was revealed that he had been the subject of racist bullying for years that was condoned by managers on at least ten occasions when they might have acted to prevent it. Consider what might happen, with that sort of management culture operating without the constraints of a strong union. And think about that whenever you hear about 'union bullies', as you surely will.

Another part of the picture is that management want to reduce the cost of labour, to enhance the company's capacity as a profit-making institution. The inquiry led by Lord Sawyer acknowleged that aside from working in an unpleasant environment, postal workers traditionally suffer from low pay. The CWU points out that the average pay for a postal worker is much less than the average for skilled workers, even though managers enjoy lavish pay settlements with bonuses rivalling some of those bestowed on the oligarchs of the City. Royal Mail management would like to reduce workers' pay even further if they can, with proposed pay caps costing some workers £180 a week. This issue has been fuelling strikes across the country recently. (Royal Mail managers have responded to the strikes by scabbing). So, aside from job cuts, Royal Mail's current strategy involves forcing through a pay freeze, which is a de facto pay cut, while insisting on compulsory - but free! - overtime.

The next part of the story has to do with what the government intends to do with the postal service. Had Mandelson had his way, part of the Royal Mail would already be privatised. That had to be shelved last year, in part because of opposition from the backbenches. The major source of opposition to the privatization programme, though, is the organised Royal Mail workforce itself. So, in preparation for a renewed privatization drive, the government wants to decisively beat the union. Now, Mandelson has been very clear that this part-privatization proposal is just the first step toward full privatization. As Blair's secretary for trade and industry, he had always wanted Royal Mail "to be progressively private, even if if initially part of the company stayed in the Government's hands".

Already, the introduction of private competition has allowed companies like TNT and Citypost to bid for Royal Mail's more profitable contracts, while still using the Royal Mail's socialised infrastructure to actually deliver the mail. That has clearly been done in such a way as to make Royal Mail uncompetitive, and to blackmail its workforce into accepting changes that may not be for either their good or that of customers. Thus, in respect of the current strikes, The Guardian has reported - falsely, as it turned out - that the Royal Mail had lost a major postal contract for Amazon. The moral is clear, and cited by government ministers everywhere: strike, and people will just find other ways to get their mail delivered. Royal Mail managers have also claimed that the amount of mail being handled has declined, and that this in itself justifies substantial job losses in adaptation to a changing market. But postal workers have spotted the ruse behind this:

Mail is delivered to the offices in standard-size grey boxes. In the past, the volume was estimated by weighing the boxes. These days it is done by averages. There was an estimate for the number of letters in each box, decided by national agreement between management and the union: 208. So the volume of mail passing through each office was worked out: 208 letters per box, multiplied by the number of boxes. But in the past year, Royal Mail has arbitrarily reduced the estimate for the number of letters in each box from 208 to 150.
Doubting the accuracy of this number, the union ordered a random manual count. On average, those boxes which the Royal Mail claims contain 150 items actually carry 267. This manipulation explains how the Royal Mail can say figures are down when every postman knows that volume is up.

These myths - about union intransigence, about the economic necessity of job losses, about the superior efficiency of private competitors, etc. - are being deployed for the purposes of turning a low-cost public service provider into a marketplace of competing providers in accordance with the extraordinarily resilient neoliberal orthodoxy. This brings with it the usual problems - soaring costs, as companies seek to make a profit, duplication of capacity as they fight for market share, and poorer service as low paid, casualised and de-unionised workers are less committed to the job, and less likely to have the time and training necessary to develop their skills. Royal Mail, for all its faults, is one of the last bargains in town. Less than forty pence for a first class letter to anywhere in the UK is nothing. What else would you spend that money on? You couldn't even buy a pint of milk or a Mars bar with that money. Additionally, as much as businesses might whine when there is a strike on, capital makes a big efficiency gain with Royal Mail, especially if they use the metered mail service which gives them a further discount. Admittedly, the Royal Mail is not as cheap as America's socialised mail service, where a first class letter can cost as little as $0.44 (£0.27). But we can't all be as communistic as the yanks.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/

[Jan Klimkowski]

The union has just spilled the beans on Mandelson and senior Royal Mail managers, and their secret agenda.

:top:

This is clearly New Labour's version of Thatcher's war against the coal miners. I'm delighted the union has finally called it as it truly is.

The union warned of further strikes in the coming weeks and launched an extraordinary attack on Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, saying he was working "hand in hand with the Royal Mail" to "undermine the dispute".

General secretary Billy Hayes accused him of being the "minister without responsibility".



Dave Ward, the union's deputy general secretary, said the Royal Mail had no intention of resolving the dispute and seemed intent on "sidelining" the concerns of postal workers.

Mr Ward, who led the union's negotiators during marathon peace talks, said he believed progress had been made and that a deal could have been agreed which would have averted the strikes.

But he said a letter sent today to the union by Royal Mail managing director Mark Higson had "wiped out" progress which had been made during the talks and scuppered the chances of a deal.


Mr Ward said the letter from Mr Higson "completely contradicted" some of the issues that had been agreed during the talks and it appeared that he had a "veto" over the talks.


Mr Ward went on to claim that every time progress had been made during the negotiations "external forces" had deliberately attempted to undermine the chances of a deal.


He singled out three men - Mr Higson, Royal Mail chief executive Adam Crozier and Lord Mandelson.


"What we have seen in the last few days is a deliberate choreograph that tells us that the Government and the Royal Mail are working hand in hand to avert any chances of reaching a solution."


Mr Ward said he had met Lord Mandelson nine months ago when the Government was attempting to part-privatise the Royal Mail and was told that the minister had no confidence in the company's board and management, saying they did not have the skills to transform the company.


Lord Mandelson said the only way industrial relations would improve was if Dutch company TNT was brought in to help run the business, Mr Ward claimed.


He went on: "We are absolutely clear that the real truth behind this dispute is that Lord Mandelson clearly feels it is pay-back time because we defeated him on privatisation.


"Lord Mandelson is backing the same people he said did not have the expertise to deal with the transformation of the business."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/hom...06453.html

[Magda Hassan]

A Postal Strike in Britain is the War at Home


Oct 21, 2009 By John Pilger

John Pilger's ZSpace Page / ZSpace
The postal workers' struggle is as vital for democracy as any national event in recent years. The campaign against them is part of a historic shift from the last vestiges of political democracy in Britain to a corporate world of insecurity and war. If the privateers running the Post Office are allowed to win, the regression that now touches all lives bar the wealthy will quicken its pace. A third of British children now live in low-income or impoverished families. One in five young people is denied hope of a decent job or education.
And now the Brown government is to mount a "fire sale" of public assets and services worth �16bn. Unmatched since Margaret Thatcher's transfer of public wealth to a new gross elite, the sale, or theft, will include the Channel Tunnel rail link, bridges, the student loan bank, school playing fields, libraries and public housing estates. The plunder of the National Health Service and public education is already under way.
The common thread is adherence to the demands of an opulent, sub-criminal minority exposed by the 2008 collapse of Wall Street and of the City of London, now rescued with hundreds of billions in public money and still unregulated with a single stringent condition imposed by the government. Goldman Sachs, which enjoys a personal connection with the Prime Minister, is to give employees record average individual pay and bonus packages of �500,000. The Financial Times now offers a service called How to Spend It.
None of this is accountable to the public, whose view was expressed at the last election in 2005: New Labour won with the support of barely a fifth of the British adult population. For every five people who voted Labour, eight did not vote at all. This was not apathy, as the media pretend, but a strike by the public - like the postal workers are today on strike. The issues are broadly the same: the bullying and hypocrisy of contagious, undemocratic power.
Since coming to office, New Labour has done its best to destroy the Post Office as a highly productive public institution valued with affection by the British people. Not long ago, you posted a letter anywhere in the country and it reached its destination the following morning. There were two deliveries a day, and collections on Sundays. The best of Britain, which is ordinary life premised on a sense of community, could be found at a local post office, from the Highlands to the Pennines to the inner cities, where pensions, income support, child benefit and incapacity benefit were drawn, and the elderly, the awkward, the inarticulate and the harried were treated humanely.
At my local post office in south London, if an elderly person failed to turn up on pension day, he or she would get a visit from the postmistress, Smita Patel, often with groceries. She did this for almost 20 years until the government closed down this "lifeline of human contact", as the local Labour MP called it, along with more than 150 other local London branches. The Post Office executives who faced the anger of our community at a local church - unknown to us, the decision had already been taken - were not even aware that the Patels made a profit. What mattered was ideology; the branch had to go. Mention of public service brought puzzlement to their faces.
The postal workers, having this year doubled annual profits to �321m, have had to listen to specious lectures from Peter Mandelson, a twice-disgraced figure risen from the murk of New Labour, about "urgent modernisation". The truth is, the Royal Mail offers a quality service at half the price of its privatised rivals Deutsche Post and TNT. In dealing with new technology, postal workers have sought only consultation about their working lives and the right not to be abused - like the postal worker who was spat upon by her manager, then sacked while he was promoted; and the postman with 17 years' service and not a single complaint to his name who was sacked on the spot for failing to wear his cycle helmet. Watch the near frenzy with which your postie now delivers. A middle-aged man has to run much of his route in order to keep to a preordained and unrealistic time. If he fails, he is disciplined and kept in his place by the fear that thousands of jobs are at the whim of managers.
Communication Workers Union negotiators describe intransigent executives with a hidden agenda - just as the National Coal Board masked Thatcher's strictly political goal of destroying the miners' union. The collaborative journalists' role is unchanged, too. Mark Lawson, who pontificates about middlebrow cultural matters for the BBC and the Guardian and receives many times the remuneration of a postal worker, dispensed a Sun-style diatribe on 10 October. Waffling about the triumph of email and how the postal service was a "bystander" to the internet when, in fact, it has proven itself a commercial beneficiary, Lawson wrote: "The outcome [of the strike] will decide whether Billy Hayes of the CWU will, like [Arthur] Scargill, be remembered as someone who presided over the destruction of the industry he was meant to represent."
The record is clear that Scargill and the miners were fighting against the wholesale destruction of an industry that was long planned for ideological reasons. The miners' enemies included the most subversive, brutal and sinister forces of the British state, aided by journalists - as Lawson's Guardian colleague Seumas Milne documents in his landmark work, The Enemy Within. Postal workers deserve the support of all honest, decent people, who are reminded that they may be next on the list if they remain silent.

[David Guyatt]

I think it is quite apparent that decisions have been reached amongst the three political parties and the powers that be that the PO Union is to be fully terminated in order to effectively quell Labour Party dissent, so that the planned sale of the PO can proceed unhindered. This will create huge profits made for everyone involved - including the Treasury, who will receive a size-able chunk of much needed revenue to defray the ongoing cost of the banking bailout.

What is taking place is a an authorized covert action.

[Jan Klimkowski]

I think it is quite apparent that decisions have been reached amongst the three political parties and the powers that be that the PO Union is to be fully terminated in order to effectively quell Labour Party dissent, so that the planned sale of the PO can proceed unhindered. This will create huge profits made for everyone involved - including the Treasury, who will receive a size-able chunk of much needed revenue to defray the ongoing cost of the banking bailout.

What is taking place is a an authorized covert action.

Yes. Played out with the connivance of MSM in persistently framing the issues in a totally misleading way.

On TV & radio I've heard numerous BBC presenters state (I paraphrase) "both sides claim the other side is lying so let's ignore that", followed by some ridiculous talking head opining about how all industries must "modernize or die", and how a strike will give extra business to Royal Mail competitors.

According to my woman postie, postal workers' routes are now calculated on a walking rate of 5 miles per hour, with a heavy bag on their back, whilst navigating drives, finding the right letters and somehow maneouvring them through a variety of differently designed letterboxes. Meanwhile, management hate regular first class post as it's not inherently profitable, much preferring the junk, planet-trashing, shite (insurance offers, pizza menus etc) that they insist on stuffing thru my letterbox.

The BBC (and other MSM) is using (abusing) its duty to be "impartial", and "fair and balanced", to not report the farcical nature of the negotiations where the government's representative, "Lord" Mandelson (who can't even be questioned in the House of Commons), states there is no point going to arbitration because, in essence, the union is refusing to modernize.

What is actually needed is a detailed, forensic, deconstruction of this word, "modernize", to lay out precisely how the management intends to rewrite workers' terms and conditions of employment.

Are we seeing that happen? Of course not.