Post workers vote to strike on pay
Postal workers have voted by a margin of 2-1 on a 65% turnout to take strike action over pay. This is one of the largest votes for action by a major group of workers in recent years, and is a measure of the anger felt by many over recent developments at Consignia.
The claim is a modest 5% as the first step towards a £300 a week basic wage in 2003, for this low paid group of workers. Consignia’s offer is a first step to nowhere. It has offered 2% with strings that include a 1.7% increase for overtime payments, and the removal of driving allowances. The lower offer for overtime can only be seen as a step towards the removal of premium payments altogether.
Although the gap between the offer and the claim is only 3%, the membership is prepared to fight. The CWU made it clear in its publicity that those opposed to strike action should vote no, implying that the union intended to call such action in pursuit of the claim.
But there is also a feeling amongst both activists and the membership that the pay claimis not the main issue confronting the union.
Liberalisation
The real issue is the moves by the New Labour-appointed regulator towards rapid liberalisation of the industry, (far faster than required by EU directives) … and the 30,000 jobs which Consignia has announced are to go.
Business (junk) mail (50% of the total) is to be opened to competition, and the industry completely deregulated within less than three years.
Deregulation not only threatens massive job loss, and deterioration in pay and conditions at Consignia, but will also directly lead to a drastic reduction of levels of service delivery to rural postal services in particular. It will also probably lead directly to the end of uniform national postal prices, established in the mid 19th Century.
The left wing CWU leadership of Billy Hayes has conducted a not very energetic and so far disastrously unsuccessful lobbying campaign against liberalisation and its consequences, which it is now promising to step up.
But it is wary of mobilising the membership for action over the issue of liberalisation for fear of running foul of the anti-union laws which prohibit the use of industrial action for political ends.
Mobilising
Instead of counterposing action over the pay claim to action in defence of the postal service, as the union leadership appears to be doing in practice, action for the pay claim should be seen as a way of mobilising the membership which if successful could also be a first step to mobilisation over competition and jobs.
Consignia, mindful of its recent losses, and of the impending threat of competition, is unlikely to go much above its current offer without actual industrial action. The membership has voted massively for a strike.
The union must reject any offer which falls short of the claim, and call strike action. An all out indefinite strike would be the most effective way of making the union’s case, and making its still considerable economic power felt.
It would both prepare postal workers for the battles to come – and be a shot in the arm for the rest of the trade union movement, for most of which this type of action has unfortunately become a distant memory.