There is no doubt that this is the worse period in any dispute. This period is when indivuduals dont know whats in the agreement and when people naturally think they have been stitched up.
People jumped to conclusions at Brendan Barbers statement about no strikes before christmas and clearly people think they have been betrayed.
However what Barber actually said was that the delivery of both parties of this agreement will lead to a strike free christmas period.
The words of the agreement on 1.6 allows the union to still take strike action if we do not feel they are abiding by the terms of the agreement. The National ballot and all local ballots are still live.
1.6 states : The operation of this agreement , the progress of negotiations , and the initial monitoring of the implementation of this agreement will be fromally reviewed by both parties and the norminated independent person during the WC 16th November, and fortnightly thereafter. In the reviews the success of this agreement will be tested against genuine progress on all key principles set out in paragraph 4 and achievement of agreements to resolve the local disputes.
The intention of both parties is to make significant progress by early December with the aim of concluding a final agreement by the end of 2009. Diaries will be cleared to ensure four days a week will be scheduled for work on concluding this agreement. The delivery by both partiesof the terms of this agreement will ensure that there will be no industrial action in the run up to and during the christmas period.
The simple fact is if Royal Mail are not adhereing to the agreement then we will call further strikes we will know that within two weeks.
I realise that people get wound up when they dont know the detail of whats been agreed but be in no doubt what has been agreed is the best we can achieve at this moment the test at both local and national level is that Royal Mail will keep to what it has agreed. We will know within first couple of meetings in London whether they are playing the game if not then we will once again notify of stike action.
For the first time every PEC member voted for this agreement that should tell you something.
I do despair sometimes at the negativity of some of the posts especially as you have not even seen the agreement. I think it puts down the scafice of our members who in some areas have lost 18 days pay.
This agreement was always going to be a framework for further talks but it does allow local talks on impostion and achieves a number of other important things. The reason why we have not done a deal on the bigger issues is that there are very complex issues and the committment to meet 4 days per week should tell you that we think we need a further 28 days of talks to achieve all those issues.Best will in the world we cannot negotate the bigger issues when strike action is taking place.
There is no doubt that Higson was the one who was more worried about the agreement and personally I think he wont last long in his postion. I still believe that the Hawks like Tolhurst, Cameron in Royal Mail will try and pull back some ground by not adhering to parts of this agreement but now is the time to test this by getting in both Locally and nationally to see if they abide by what they have agreed.
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infact why are they ignoring 120,000 of it members, why are all of us members the last to know,we voted YES for a national strike, we didn't vote for a calming period, we didn't give up 2 day WAGES so they can sit on their arses and sort this out after christmas, I can understand why a lot of members want to leave CWU, because lets face it we have been treated like dirt 
,YES BALLOT IS LIVE BUT WE DONT TRUST THE THREE AMIGO`S ONE BIT 
,.TO ME IT`S A SMOKE SCREEN UNTIL XMAS THEN AFTER NEW YEAR STRIKE IF U`S WANT 2.MAKING THE UNION LOOK THE BADDIES ONCE AGAIN 
very articulate, wish I could write like that,
''i do despair of the negativity of some posts""' Ha. When have royal mail ever stuck to an agreement?