Fifteen hundred postal workers marched against the threat of competition to the Post Office on March 16. The regulator, Postcomm, wants unlimited competition well ahead of the time-scale required by the European Directive and has the support of new Labour in pushing for this.
The result will be fierce "cream-skimming" competition in the profitable urban and bucinacs coctors of the marker. and a deterioration of the postal service in rural areas.
The postal leadership has litte stomach for a fight over this. This is despite the fact this will allow companies such as Hays, Deutsche Post and TNT to take massive market shares and make enormous profits in the Lity.
The plan also aims to intimidate the union into accepting privatisation without a fight by using the "discipline of the market" Consignia management has already announced cuts of 30,000 jobs.
John Keggie, Deputy General Secretary, promised the rally following the march further demonstrations. "not of 5.000 but of 45,000", while General Secretary Billy Hayes called on the government to sack the regulator.
However the action he called for was not up to the task. He pushed the union's "Rein in the Postcomm Monster" postcard campaign to the Prime Minister and called for every level of government to pass resolutions against deregulation, from parish council upwards. The union has already collected 161 signatures for an Early Day Motion, and the Welsh Assembly has passed a similar motion.
He called for CWU members to talk to their customers!) and was ambiguous on the question of the political fund..
Despite Hayes being elected with the support of the left, he has failed to overrule Keggie, his defeated Blairite challenger, who wants to persuade his new Labour friends of the inadvisability of postal liberalisation and privatisation.
Hayes has come under increasing pressure from frustrated branch activists who can see what is in store and who want to fight. A massive industrial and political campaign against postal liberalisation and privatisation needs to be built.
Such a campaign must include at its heart both a political and industrial strategy which is incorporates strike action against these deadly threats to both service users and postal workers alike. The campaign must also make alliances in: action with other European postal and telecommunication unions against the European finestiva To build popular support, the union needs to advance an alternative vision of a communications service that will meet the needs of the working class and oppressed. This should include the provision of free post, telephone and internet services for the old, unemployed and young, drawn up with union, community and pensioner activists. Such a campaign would inevitably come into conflict with the anti-union laws that the CWU leadership is desperate to avoid.
But the Hayes leadership does not want to confront Labour on liberalisation. Even though Postcomm's plans have been public for months, the demonstration was called with barely two weeks notice. This was despite the pleas of the weeks to enable a larger demonstration to be built Most branches only received leaflets days before. It was called on a Saturday morning, when most postal workers are at work. No strike action was called. This is no way to build a campaign to defend a public postal service.
The choice of date for the demonstration, which coincided with the Socialist Alliance trade union conference, may or may not have been accidenal. It was certainly used by the Socialist Party to try to undermine the trade union conterence, not only amongst CWU members, but more broadly amongst trade union lefts.
In this they signally failed.
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