Postal workers have been left hanging for over two months as negotiations between Royal Mail and CWU officials (Communication Workers Union) drag on, since the national strike against cuts and closures was cancelled in early November. While in some areas like London management was forced to retreat from the swingeing cuts it had made since the Spring 2009, provoking the showdown, none of the national issues were sorted. Strike momentum was killed to cave in to UK bosses’ demand for a strike-free Christmas.

Frustration mixed with fear of a dodgy deal are in top gear as the unsavoury details leak out of what is being agreed over our heads. There has been zero communication about what is being negotiated to CWU members. Top officials have always been open that door to door (compulsory junkmail) was going to be hiked – of course they don’t have to break their backs delivering them! However a report by a CWU Postal Executive member Pete Keenlyside has shed a ray of light on the talks – and its much worse!

Royal Mail is still demanding the union sign up to half of mail centres closing, and later start and finish times including Saturday, gutting postal workers’ limited weekend. Union policy of the 35 hour week with no loss of pay, which would absorb efficiency gains by new sorting machines for the workers, is being dropped for a “net” figure with a little over an hour shaved off the 40 hour working week, instead making paid breaks into unpaid – a fiddle. Yet Keenlyside writes “Management have produced costings to show that even a 35-hour net week would be too expensive for them”! Officials are trying to convince them to finance it by Colleagueshare money – ie money workers were to receive anyways.

Royal Mail is conceding nothing, while our leaders are desperate to do a deal at any cost: “Part of the problem in discussing any benefits package is that management have yet to commit to telling us what would be on offer if we were to accept all of their proposals, which makes negotiating a bit difficult.” Or a complete sham! A sign of this is the talks running through deadline after deadline for a deal – first before Christmas, then 22 January, and now extended for another week.

Royal Mail’s profits jumped 4% to £184 million in the first half of the financial year despite supposedly falling mail volumes, the company’s excuse for slashing full-time jobs and hiking workload. This underestimates the rise in UK profits since its European operation’s profits fell by £14 million due to the recession - so much for a company in decline.

Now Royal Mail is gearing up for its 2010 round of cuts and as if talks did not exist, causing real anger and dismay on the office floor. CWU activists have to act quickly and regroup at the grassroots level to turn the anger into action. Activists around the Post Worker paper have put forward a statement “The Modernisation Agreement We Want”, arguing for the full (“gross”) 35 hour week not net, shorter Saturday attendances, no mail centre closures that workers are against and an end to unagreed changes that Royal Mail is pushing such as unrealistic work rates. It rightly calls for a union campaign for the government not just to take on the £10 billion pension deficit but renationalise the private operations like TNT that piggyback on Royal Mail’s delivery operations.

This is a good platform (if too vague in parts for instance in defence of fulltime jobs) that activists should support and pass in branch. However none of these demands can be won – especially forcing the pro-market, budget cutting Labour government to act – without strike action.

There is the danger that the Postal Executive throws in the towel as it did in 2007 and campaigns for a bad deal as the “best deal on offer”. That dispute saw a third of branches recommend their members reject the deal, but this was not enough to stop the rot. Post Worker, revived once again by the Socialist Workers Party, has taken a good initiative with its model motion but needs to go further and organise. A national rank and file meeting is essential to bring together a campaign able to convince members to reject any rotten deal, that this time they have the chance to overturn the dead hand of Ward, Hayes and Co. and successfully fight.

Such a meeting could lay the basis for a rank and file movement capable of giving postal workers an alternative lead. With nearly a third of areas engaged in the 2009 strike wave and London radicalised, the possibilities of building such a movement are better than ever- and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

See workers power CWU page for Workers Power Bulletins and updates:
http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?cwu_union

Check out the Red Postie blog, written by and for militant postal workers: http://redpostie.com/