Union of Communication Workers
Tuffin
holds back
the tears
but fails to
stem the
tide
By a happy coincidence the Union of Communication Workers' (UCW) rules revision conference took place only a couple of weeks after one bout of industrial action, in the middle of a half-baked campaign (against crown office closures) and a series of one-day strikes by clerical and counter staff.
Bearing in mind bow solid the action over the Difficult Recruitment Area Supplement (DRAS) had been — the national strike spread around the country horizontally through branch action, with only the retrospective endorsement of the UCW sexecutive —and given the intense anger felt against generad secretary Alan Tuffin, he got off pretty lightly.
The anticipated public hanging did not take place, but Tuffin did lose votes on preventing bi-annual elections al branch and executive leveL and seeking to cut the amount of money refunded to branches from the UCW's nation-
Atthe close of the conference came two very significant speeches Les Hewitt announced that talks with the Post Office over DRAS had broken down - apparenty irreversibly. Tuffin, literally choking back the tears, angrily com plained about the "Thatcherism' of the Post Of. fice Board, and congratulated himself and the executive for their previous moderation. He then announced that he, and they, were prepared to lead the next fight!
This will take place sooner rather than later. Both the govemment and the Post Office want to impose regional pay selllements, because while in Glasgow there are five hundred people on the waiting list for casual and temporary johe as postal workers, virtually every office in the south cast has vacancy levels of berween ten and fifteen per cent for full-rime jobs,
Although the Post Office management was as surprised as everyone clse by how quickly the last strike spread, it is already provoking workers by limiting overtime for Christmas
FEATU Alan Tuffin (left) with right wing Engineers leader Bill Jordan working - traditionally the touchiest subject in the industry. I is not possible to predict when exactly the next cruphon will be or how it will start: but it is likely lo be only a matter of weeks
The cole of branch organisation proved cru cial in the strike. The national leadership found itself reacting to initiatives from branchen and districts, and failed to build or lead the strike itself. Credit mus go to excellent local leaderships, particularly in Cardiff and Liverpool. Large branches much as Manchester which have their own office premiser were able to lend practical support to Amaller branches in outlying areas, despite the vacillation oflocal leaderships ou the eventual deal.
There in a lesson in this: the crusting district council structure of the LICW was in areas like South Wales supplemented by organisation which developed to mirror that of the Past Office'wwn letter territories:
However the role of the broad left in the strike was barely perceptible. The UCW broad left, as is so often the case, is almost completely dominated by supporters of Militant: so much so that they used their numbers to prevent the clection of Socialist Workers Party supporters onto the broad left's national steering committee. Nevertheless the broad left is the ouly group in the union which is capable of orBanising members on a national level on a perspective of class struggle.
It goes without saying that all left wingers in the UCW should join the broad left. That is one way of overcoming its present political problems, its lack of national profile and its low level of activity. It is certainly nowhere near representing a national alternative to the present one hundred percent Kinnockite executive council: yet that is what, if more effective, a hroad left should aim to he
If the broad left is to break out of its isolation it will have to find a way of tuming to the devclopments on the ground which we have already referred lo. This would offer the pos sibility of providing a lead to tens of thousands, rather than pockets and handfuls of postal workers. However if past performance is anything to go by, the pruspects are not encourag-
The failings of the hroad left so far should not leave us too pessimistic about the future. In an industry where many thousands of workers were still in primary school when Thatcher was elected, the rank and file is, though unevenly in places, aggressive and confident after its first experience of an undefeated national strike.
Recent elections in branches have scen left wingers elected or re-clected with their authority enhanced. The Tuffin leadership knows that after the debacle on the shorter working week and the shoddy DRAS settlement, they will have to give a good account of themselves in the next fight - unless they want to risk finding themselves out in the cold delivering letters again!
Billy Carron