The Communication Workers Union "Live Q&A" without members: CWU backs Royal Mail job-slashing agenda

[stage3]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/ ... -a07.html

Tony Robson

An “Update on the USO—live Q&A with Dave Ward & Martin Walsh,” broadcast on the CWU (Communication Workers Union) Live YouTube channel last Wednesday, was a shambolic affair. Chris Webb, CWU Head of Communications, claimed the meeting allowed members “to have a say where the Universal Service operation goes.”

This defies satire. The event was broadcast at 3.30pm, with members only notified via a Letter to Branches emailed after midday.

On its Facebook group, the CWU stated: “We know many of you will be at work, so, as usual, this episode will be available on catch up, and we will be doing another live call in the evening soon,” with Webb later confirming it would be held “in a couple of weeks.”

From the CWU’s new media studio, General Secretary Dave Ward and Deputy General Secretary (Postal) Martin Walsh dedicated the entire session to spinning their acceptance that the Universal Service Obligation (USO) must “adapt to change” and “modernise”, working to block any fightback by postal workers against the company’s announced attack on the USO and thousands of jobs.


CWU Head of Communications Chris Webb (left), leader Dave Ward (centre) and Martin Walsh, the union's Deputy General Secretary (Postal) at a CWU Live event, April 3, 2024 [Photo: screenshot of video: YouTube/CWULive]
Those online were denied any input other than commenting in the chat. But during the one hour “Q&A” none of the members’ queries or criticisms were answered. Repeated questions about job losses were ignored, while chief censor Webb announced at the end of the meeting that all those who had posted comments were eligible for a free CWU T-shirt!

Rank and file postal workers were left seething. Comments on the CWU Live YouTube channel were 99 percent critical. They included:

“So why is this fair, the delivery postman get shafted again. Later starts, worse sick benefits, and all our walks get obliterated to satisfy the new USO. For 38 years I have been a delivery postman, and been a member all that time, yet we are now treated as second class members. Shame on all of you.”
“2% pay rise how much you lot creamed off on expenses over last 2 years.”
“The more of us long serving delivery staff leave by being demoralised, the more new contracts can be brought in. This only benefits the main shareholders not the service. Privatisation has failed.”
“Royal Mail managed to find 750,000 pounds down the back of the settee to pay off Simon Thompson and then plead poverty. Give me a break.”
Ward’s opening statement to the meeting set the tone and was aimed at blocking any challenge: “Once again we are having to deal with the reality of change. I think we cannot face away from that. It’s one of our messages and has been for a long time.”

As the trusted mouthpiece of Martin Seidenberg, chief executive of Royal Mail parent company IDS, Ward lectured that the USO was “not sustainable”. Referring to the company’s “self-inflicted” financial problems—a polite term for £600 million worth of looting by major shareholders—Ward stated, “We have to address the reality of that irrespective of what we are feeling about the company.”

Ward sought to portray the CWU as a restraining hand against the options cited by Royal Mail and postal regulator Ofcom to reduce the USO to a three or four-day service. Ward claimed the CWU had “influenced the politicians, both the government and the Labour Party and obviously Royal Mail”.

The CWU has offered to help reduce the USO to five days, alongside other cost-cutting measures, including reduced delivery speeds for second class mail.

Walsh chimed with Ward, making constant references to capturing “market share”. They made clear this meant speeding-up the transition from a mail service to a parcel carrier in line with the stated aim of the Business Recovery, Transformation and Growth Agreement it signed with the company in April 2023.

The real purpose of the online meeting was for CWU officials to offer their services in trialling Royal Mail’s “Optimised Model” for mail delivery, starting in Scotland “and other parts of the UK” without waiting on the outcome of Ofcom’s review. Ward declared the current “delivery model is broken”, but the CWU executive are joint partners in Royal Mail’s wrecking operation.

Over the past two years, the CWU leadership has helped push through the largest cost-cutting revisions in its history, collapsing the USO. The CWU vetoed postal workers’ strike mandate to enforce a sell-out deal. The proposed Optimised Model means First Class letters will continue to be delivered six days and parcels across seven days but “non-priority products” including Second Class and bulk business mail (bills and statements) will be delivered every other weekday. In its briefing to reps the CWU states the company is in fact seeking to cut 6,000 jobs through “net attrition” not the 1,000 officially cited.


Ward and Walsh had the front to cajole members to “get behind the union,” which is again marching in lock-step with the company.

During the meeting it was admitted that Royal Mail’s two-tier workforce—which the CWU established through its pro-company agreement—had enabled Royal Mail to recruit 15,000 new entrants on inferior pay and conditions. But 85 percent had left within a year, a massive rebuke to the gig economy conditions being enforced. Ward and Walsh presented this mass exodus as a retention problem not a social disaster inflicted on postal workers by the union’s pro-company agreement.

Walsh even defended the implementation of 10,000 redundancies last year because “we’re spreading less and less traffic over six days” adding in regard to the USO that he would “have preferred to see six [days] into five.”

He repeated the company’s lying claims that it would allow 40 percent of delivery staff to have Saturdays off. Along with Ward, he asserted that new attendance patterns on a four-day basis would offer more weekends and weekdays off. This is a Trojan Horse for the Amazon model, forcing those in delivery to work later into the night, with Ward insisting that parcels would be delivered until 9pm.

Despite having excluded CWU members from any participation in the “Live Q&A” event, Ward and Walsh announced they had a mandate to draw up a “Statement of Principles” on terms and conditions to be presented at the CWU conference on April 21-25.

The last thing postal workers need is another pro-company joint statement from the authors of last year’s surrender document! A genuine statement of principles is needed to mobilise the rank-and-file and dismantle and replace the CWU’s unaccountable bureaucracy. A network of committees must be elected from the shop floor across every section of Royal Mail putting workers’ interests before the company’s profit grab that is destroying the mail service.

The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee is holding an online meeting on Sunday April 28 at 7 pm. It is open to all postal workers who want to discuss the way forward.

[postslippete]

Whilst it is annoying that Simon Thompson left with £750k, he did his job in breaking the CWU. 18 days of strike action cost the company £200 million yet sick absence allegedly cost the company £250 million in one year. The deal that was agreed significantly curbs sick pay and should theoretically enable the company to be in better shape for the future. The fact that thousands have since left/planning to leave and that Royal Mail are struggling to recruit staff on less pay, terms and conditions is merely an afterthought.

RM's long term goal is now heavily focussed on reforming the USO which is designed to save them even more money. What the Union should really be doing is opening the books and finding out exactly where all this money that has been made on the back of failing bigger deliveries has gone. Instead they appear to be agreeing with everything that the company are doing in a watered down fashion saying that change is inevitable simply because they don't have the balls to stand up for us anymore.

[Smoothbackground]

That’s some swanky “media studio” they’ve got.

[Barnacle]

What the Union should really be doing is opening the books and finding out exactly where all this money that has been made on the back of failing bigger deliveries has gone. Instead they appear to be agreeing with everything that the company are doing in a watered down fashion saying that change is inevitable simply because they don't have the balls to stand up for us anymore.

This exactly. The numbers make no sense. The CWU need to be on it instead of seemingly taking RM’s word on everything.

[stage3]

Firstly it was not Royal Mail which broke the strike after 18 days it was the CWU Postal Executive. The veto of the 96 mandate to renew action was to stage secret ACAS talks which cooked up the biggest sellout of Royal Mail workers in history through the pro-company agreement.

Ward and Co recognise ballot results only when it goes the way of their partnership with the company to tear of terms and conditions and cut jobs, the February vote for action dwarfed the final acceptance. Every bureaucratic trick was used to get it over the line. That is their response to the will of the membership. Calls for them to stand up, grow a pair and expose the business secrets fall wide of the mark. The Postal Executive and reps loyal to them (not those thrown under the bus by the Falconer Review) have been rewarded through the Joint Working Groups to implement the sweatshop charter. Royal Mail could not do any of this without the pro-company union apparatus policing all opposition, its called corporatism.

The CWU staged a bogus Q&A Live to make out their acceptance of Royal Mail's proposals to dismantle the USO and cut thousands of jobs was bringing the workforce along with the company hatchet plan. For those who have asked what the Postal Workers Rank and File Committee does it fights to expose the conspiracy between union bureaucrats and company executives, inform and unify the entire RMG workforce, draw up demands that put jobs terms and conditions first and yes has raised the demand to open up the books to expose criminal plundering of profits and the abuse of technology to destroy jobs and ratchet up exploitation. There is no fight against the company without a fight against its partner the unaccountable union bureaucracy.

[Valentina@1]

Spot on

[postslippete]

Firstly it was not Royal Mail which broke the strike after 18 days it was the CWU Postal Executive.

What you have written is well documented in an article by the World Socialist Website. I agree with most of what that article said - but no Union ever takes strike action lightly and the CWU actually started off with a position of a "no change pay deal". After the strike at Xmas, the Union was on the floor being tapped out by a much stronger adversary. Whether they got their tactics wrong or not remains to be seen. I voted NO to the deal but I know of many people who couldn't face losing any more money during the cost of living crisis and thought the strikes were a bit pointless. All it did was play into Royal Mail's hands as they could continue to tell the public that they were continually losing money and needed to change whilst also having a convenient excuse for not getting letters delivered as well (something which is still going on now ). So imho the Union capitulated and it was Royal Mail that broke the strike. Simon Thompson had done his job but he was always going to be forced to leave afterwards.

[clashcityrocker]

Firstly it was not Royal Mail which broke the strike after 18 days it was the CWU Postal Executive.

What you have written is well documented in an article by the World Socialist Website.

That's because stage 3 is the WSW.
A renowned purveyor of anti trade union shite.

[Barnacle]

Firstly it was not Royal Mail which broke the strike after 18 days it was the CWU Postal Executive.

What you have written is well documented in an article by the World Socialist Website.

That's because stage 3 is the WSW.
A renowned purveyor of anti trade union shite.

Succinctly put

[Sean06]

Firstly it was not Royal Mail which broke the strike after 18 days it was the CWU Postal Executive.

What you have written is well documented in an article by the World Socialist Website.

That's because stage 3 is the WSW.
A renowned purveyor of anti trade union shite.

[guardianangel]

The union are in disarray and a shambles,ex posties at the top table have literally no clue what they are doing.

[Sean06]

The union are in disarray and a shambles,ex posties at the top table have literally no clue what they are doing.

So would you rather have like rm do people with no background in the job at all?

[guardianangel]

The union are in disarray and a shambles,ex posties at the top table have literally no clue what they are doing.

So would you rather have like rm do people with no background in the job at all?

Lets be honest here its the posties at the top who have sold out their fellow posties while filling their pockets ,they are as bad as any royal mail exec or politician,see the money and turn their backs on the people ,i for one would pay them the same as a postie ,i mean they sit in those offices and do sod all while we are worked to death.