The Burslem Delivery Office in Stoke-on-Trent has been on an all-out strike since 18 December in defence of 12 suspended members. In the words of Communications Workers Union Midlands Regional Secretary Lee Barron, the strike has reached a "critical stage". A CWU rep writes.

Half of the Burslem 12 are either CWU reps or former reps, and management has banned union facilities and meetings in the office in what is clearly an attempt to smash the union at Burslem. The CWU nationally has called for branches to raise collections and adopt a striker in order to support the struggle, and a demonstration has been called for Saturday 19 January.

The charges relate back to the 2007 national postal strike and are vague fit-up charges such as "misuse of position as a CWU Rep", "exclusion of others" and "encouraging non-cooperation with management". In fact management themselves were proven the real bullies, as 16 per cent of members stated they had been bullied by managers in a recent and secret "Have Your Say" survey - a figure tripled from the previous year. And 80 per cent disagreed that "In my workplace people are treated fairly."

The CWU has repeatedly argued for a genuinely independent investigation into the case of the Burslem 12, giving the company a range of different options from the National Appeals Panel to ACAS and the TUC, to no avail. Royal Mail wants to keep its dictatorial powers of not just accuser but also judge, jury, and executioner. Meanwhile Royal Mail is bussing in up to 200 managers from all over Britain at the cost of tens of thousands of pounds in order to keep the office running, such is their determination to win.

Now the strikers have voted on 7 January to continue the strike, with an even higher margin (79 votes to two). They plan to stay out until the end of January. The CWU Midlands No. 7 Branch is making moves to escalate the action, moving to ballot all Royal Mail units across the Stoke-on-Trent area, and threatening to go further and bring out branches across the Midlands if the company does not back down.

The CWU leaders nationally should be following suit. This battle isn't just about Burslem; if Royal Mail wins, it will not stop there but mount similar victimisations in other offices. It is eager to follow up its victory in last year's strike with a clear-out of the activists who built the strike and militants who led the wildcat walk-outs, and who could lead further resistance to the company's attack on workers' jobs and conditions.

CWU leaders did not fight victimisations

In fact CWU leadership - Dave Ward, Billy Hayes and the Postal Executive majority who cut the rotten deal that ended the strike last year - are largely to blame for the situation in Burslem. In their haste to cave in to Royal Mail's demands and wind up the dispute, the CWU tops left out a demand that all those victimised in the course of the strike should be reinstated. The Burslem 12 strike is one bitter fruit of this cowardice and disloyalty, but there are more. Four Bristol area posties (including two reps) have been summarily sacked, two for comments on a website that were not aimed at anyone and could not possibly be seen as intimidatory, and two for trumped up charges of intimidation during the strike.

However the CWU leadership has not published the names of those victimised, so they suffer in silence, invisible to their brothers and sisters in the union. No doubt there are more instances of victimisation, and a national response is required in order to reinstate all those being attacked for going on strike and standing up for the union. Otherwise, not only will the CWU lose good activists, threatening to bust the union in many local offices, Royal Mail will see it as a green light to keep up its attacks.

The union needs to make it clear the Burslem 12, Bristol 4 and others are martyrs of the strike and mount a national campaign to reinstate all of them. A deadline for national strike action needs to be set with immediate moves to a ballot to show that the union is serious. The lesson of Unison strike leader Karen Reissmann's sacking by Manchester Mental Health Trust is that all-out strike action by isolated workplaces may not, on its own, be enough to shift a management hell-bent on getting rid of union activists. Solidarity action - and that means strike action - is the key. That would stop the 200 scab managers from breaking the strike - they'd be too busy trying to cover their own areas!

Of course, Royal Mail could go running back to the high court to get the strikes banned - in which case, the CWU should defy the law and make the Burslem 12 a cause celebre to rally the whole trade union movement around. Unless the anti-union laws are challenged, the Labour government could try and follow up its ban on the Prison Officers Association taking industrial action with more restrictions on the right to strike in the public sector.

Few CWU members, however, would trust postal secretary Dave Ward, general secretary Billy Hayes and the national executive to lead such a fight after the fiasco of last year, where they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. One hundred and thirty thousand determined postal workers mounted such a tremendous strike that, within days, it brought Royal Mail to its knees - only to see the union leaders bottle it and sign a dodgy deal giving the company almost everything it wanted.

A conference of all those workers and branches that disagreed with that sell-out - one third of CWU branches recommended rejection of the deal - is an urgent necessity, both to organise solidarity with those victimised and to debate how to fight the "flexibility" (i.e. the demands for more work for less pay) now being imposed in offices across the country, and Royal Mail's sham pension "consultation", where the outcome - an end to the final salary pension scheme - is already decided by postal bosses.

In the long term the only antidote to the reformist, pro-Labour bureaucracy in the CWU is a rank and file movement to win the union back for the members. And disaffilation from the hated Labour Party will be a major debate at this year's conference in June: postal activists need to make the break with Labour and commit the CWU to campaign for a new workers party.

Demonstrate, agitate, organise against union busting!

Postal workers cannot rely on the CWU tops to defend those victimised, much less our pensions and conditions, which they are already negotiating away hand-in-hand with Royal Mail as agreed. As the experience in Burslem so far shows, it will take mass strike action to halt Royal Mail's attempts at victimisation and open the way to a renewed struggle against restructuring. A growing solidarity campaign and spreading strike action in support of the Burslem 12 could lead to demands from below for the union tops to organise a national response against postal bosses' union busting.

There will be a national march and rally in support of the striking Burslem workers on Saturday 19th January. Marchers will assemble outside Burslem delivery office at Scotia Business Park from 1.30pm and the rally's speakers will include Billy Hayes.

Send donations and messages of support to Lee Barron, CWU Midlands regional secretary, 46-48 Summer Lane, Birmingham B19. Phone 0121 5034662 or email midlandregion@cwu.org. Make cheques out to "CWU Midland No 7 branch".