Crewe Postal Plans Under Fire

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THE future of Crewe’s postal workers was under discussion last week as Crewe and Nantwich MP Edward Timpson met with union representatives.

The politician has been backing the workers at the sorting office in their battle to stop plans to close the site and transfer hundreds of jobs to Warrington.

Mr Timpson met with Steve Gough, who is a Communication Workers' Union rep at the Weston Road site.

Mr Gough had made the trip to London to express his views to Mr Timpson on the Government's 'abuse' of the Hooper Report on the future of Royal Mail.

Discussed was the confusion around Royal Mail privatisation, the Hooper Report and the Royal Mail's mail centre closure programme of which Crewe is a proposed casualty, at a potential loss of 600 jobs to the town.

Mr Timpson rebelled against his own Party's motion to part-privatise the Royal Mail, and reaffirmed his stance to Steve.

He said: “The focus on this issue is all wrong. It's politics, politics, politics all the time. The Government is falling over itself and its own backbenchers.

"This is about one thing for me - Crewe people.

“By that, I don't just mean postal workers. I mean their husbands, wives, children, dependent parents, the businesses they use, the customers they serve.

"The whole issue of part-privatisation is being rushed, just as the closure review was.

“The country is in recession and this is not the time to make postal workers unemployed.

"I have called before for the Government to take a step back, stop the closures, and consider a properly thought out strategy for the future of Royal Mail nationwide."

Mr Timpson said that he has requested on three separate occasions definitive evidence of the Crewe site's inability to expand and modernise.