By a postal worker A WAVE of unofficial disputes in the Post Office this summer has shown the continued militancy of UCW members faced with the threat of postal privatisation.
The disputes have touched every part of the country and ranged from a few hours to several days.
At the end of June a walk out in Milton Keynes over the recruitment of casuals to cut overtime payments showed the determination of UCW members not to bow down to Royal Mail management's bullying tactics. Despite a court injunction by the end of the week 18 offices were involved in strike action.
With the very real threat of a national dispute the management made a number of guarantees to the UCW that the recruitment of casuals would be negonated and that nobody would be victimised - as a result of this Milton Keynes returned to work.
When they returned to work Royal Mail management insisted on their right to recruit an unlimited number of casual workers to clear the backlog of mail. The response was another walk out by Milton Keynes UCW. members that quickly police and security guards spread to Northampton.
The management withdrew some of the threats and the members voted to return to work. The strike was a determined stand against a management attack which was clearly in defiance of the law.
The backdrop of this dispute is the change of Post Office management's tactics in the run up to postal privatisation. It is no coincidence at the number of disputes in the Post Office. The management is openly in favour of postal privatisation as shown by their enthusiastic support for Michael Heseltine's Green paper on postal services.
This is encouraging local mallagers to lake a more aggressive attitude. The response from UCW members is growing increasingly confident with each dispute as shown by the solidarity shown to Milton Keynes.
This makes a full scale confrontation possible, but it is clearly not what the UCW leadership wants.
The UCW's response to the Green Paper has been to step up its campaign with the slogan " Save the Post Office, write a letter". The UCW wants to mobilise the widespread opposition to privatisation by organising an intensive campaign of public activity during the summer period.
The UCW's aim will be to By noon, the lorries we were get a clear commitment from a number of Tories to vote against the Heseltine preferred option of 51 per cent privatisation. This is taking the union down the dangerous path already followed by the miners in October 1992.
It is quite likely that the UCW will successfully mobilise public opinion in opposition to privatisation and even commit a number of Tory MPs to oppose it. But when faced with defeat the government are quite capable of moving the goalposts by a few percentage points of privatisation to win over troublesome backbenchers.
There is clearly a need for a tactical debate within the UCW about how to make the campaign against privatisation most effective. The UCW will be demobilised if it rules out the use of industrial action in the face of aggressive management attacks and likely tactical shifts by Heseltine.
The UCW should be quite upfront that it is quite prepared to use industrial action as part of the campaign to defeat privatisation whatever tactic is used to make the strike "legal".
This would strengthen the campaign by mobilising UCW members for positive action to stop any privatisation and catch the imagination of millions of workers looking for an issue to attack the government. TRADE UNION NEWS