Mount Pleasant Workers' Fight Bulletin 16 July 2014

[anna]

Hi - here is the latest bulletin. The CWU branch has announced a ballot across the whole office for industrial action over zero hour contracts being used by Romec for cleaners.

EQUANUTTY AND US
We see the union’s organising an “alternative CWU Trust” to represent CWU “shareholders interests”, at the 24 July shareholders’ meeting - to have a bloc vote... They say it’s complicated. Sure is. This outfit “Equiniti” is in charge of the whole shebang. The idea is for CWU-selected reps to ask pre-set questions - but have a look at them, if you can. It’s like PMQs by the PM’s party! Dave Ward explains: “the union is developing a progressive policy towards RM shareholder meetings... to build influence “. Was he born yesterday? Or has he just “developed” a shareholders’-bosses’- pet-complex?

YES, BUT WE TOLD YOU TO SAY NO
Along the same lines, Billy Hayes is now complaining that “we was robbed!” over the RM IPO (share sale). Which is a bit much when he and the exec put up no resistance, and then told us we were getting a marvellous deal and shouldn’t strike! But yes, we were robbed, along with all those who need a mail service as a utility... ie., a public service. Which is everybody.

THE FOLLY OF FLOTATION
Those in the know say the government won’t sell the 1/3 of RM it still owns - at least not till after the election next year. They also say that people who’re upset about the “small” dividend (13.3p per share) and fall in the share value (but still a high, 482p a share), should recognise that RM’s value is only as a “regulated utility”. In other words, to exist, survive, and provide share value, it has to have state protection. Forget about “free markets”! We knew that.

THE “ALTERNATIVE” IS, NO SALE!!
Anyway, let’s see what Cable&Co find out in their review (under Lord Myners) of the “botched” RM sale - and what “alternatives to IPOs for privatising state assets” they come up with, in the light of the government’s decision to abandon the sale of the UK Land Registry... At least that’s good news, especially for its 4,500 workers.

LESSONS IN SCUTTLING
So RM wants to relocate mail processing from Portsmouth to Southampton, threatening 360 jobs, and claiming it’s because of the “decline” in mail (where’ve we heard that before?). Never mind if mail’s “declining”. For us, nothing justifies job cuts. Anyway, “decline” should allow us share the “less” work among us! So we don’t agree with some of the CWU officials who “accept” this as “inevitable”. We’ve stopped RM before, why not again?

TAKING THE P
It may be hard to believe, but Romec seems to have taken on several agency workers on zero-hours contracts. Of course we need extra workers and yes, we’ve been complaining about this for years. But we want workers on the same rates and contracts as we are, and no others: equal pay and equal conditions for equal work!
ZERO-MINUTES CONTRACT
If they put managers on zero hours contracts and paid them according to how many minutes work they did, they’d soon be starving.

ZERO THE ZERO-HOUR CONTRACTS
What about Osborne’s pledge to tackle “the abuse of zero-hours contracts”? But zero-hour contracts are an abuse! The only thing to do is abolish them! And we can start by ensuring they’re never used in our workplaces.

DUST STILL FLYING
The changes amongst managers continue. We have no idea how it’ll end up. But when the dust settles we’ll be able to see who we will help to bite it.

PARCELS MANIA
It’s so hectic on Packets, it’s like being on the set of “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”! Constant search&find for skiving mini-yorks that go up to the 1st floor and don’t come back; last minute late diversions and managers freaking out - so much so, that we wouldn’t be surprised if they started punching each other’s lights out! That’d help.

WE CAN MANAGE THIS!
This nonsense of RM managers giving stage1s is just ridiculous, when we’ve been in hospital, having just had a heart attack or operation!! It’s nothing new, but it’s high time to stop it! We could elect a workers’ committee to ensure whenever one of us is sick, that managers have nothing to do with it, and all the correct leave and pay (and get well cards) are sorted!

COMMON SENSE
We all know that night-shifts are bad for everybody’s health. But if we have a specific health problem and need to move to day shift as a result, it should be done without delay! (And no loss of pay, of course!). And no waiting for a re-sign! And if there are no processing or EC vacancies, too bad: we can be added as extra!

SHARPENING OUR DARTS
Is that grumpy, no-hello, Romec manager coming back to cover maternity leave? We’d like to know. Because we still haven’t been given an introduction as to “who’s who”, in terms of bossing us around. So let’s be told - and let’s also have their photos on the wall. Our darts need practice!
[contact@w-fight.org] [www.communist-union.org]

[SpacePhoenix]

LESSONS IN SCUTTLING
So RM wants to relocate mail processing from Portsmouth to Southampton, threatening 360 jobs, and claiming it’s because of the “decline” in mail (where’ve we heard that before?). Never mind if mail’s “declining”. For us, nothing justifies job cuts. Anyway, “decline” should allow us share the “less” work among us! So we don’t agree with some of the CWU officials who “accept” this as “inevitable”. We’ve stopped RM before, why not again?

I think the layout of PO MC probably had a big influence, it's split over multiple floors and all new builds processing has been on one large floor, also AFAIK it can't handle double stacker artics

[Brain Fury]

"Nothing justifies job cuts" - puts the whole thing into perspective

[baldrick]

"Nothing justifies job cuts" - puts the whole thing into perspective

'Workers Fight' are idealistic rather than realistic. Nothing wrong with that, but not much good in the real world.

[DirtyHarry]

Sacking workers just to save a few bob, isn't justified.
Especially, if there was more than enough work, and that work now has to be palmed off on the remaining staff. Bit like what's happened to us, really.
In Britain, there rarely is any true justification for throwing workers on the scrapheap, only the inherit stinginess of the top industrialists, and that is no justification whatsoever.
This country's parliament destroyed whole communities, closed shipyards, steelworks, car plants, coal mines, just so the wealthy could save a few bob.