Royal Mail staff not doing this lightly

[Geezer]

http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/opinion/le ... h=opinion/

Last updated at 13:21, Monday, 21 September 2009

It was with great dismay that I read your comment with regards to the recent local and possible forthcoming national Royal Mail strikes (News & Star, September 17) whereby you seemed to indirectly imply that the staff of Royal Mail are taking part in strike action lightly.


You state that the leaders of the Communication Workers’ Union are after some kind of public sympathy.

The leaders of the CWU are not after sympathy, but rather an understanding that both the CWU and its members are fighting to keep Royal Mail a viable, valuable and, yes!, modern postal service in order to serve the British public in the 21st century and beyond.

The CWU and its members are very much in favour of modernisation and fully understand the reasons why it must happen. However the CWU and its members believe that the policies of Royal Mail, whereby the company seems to think that down-sizing the business and severely cutting jobs which in turn leads to the cutting of services, all while posting massive profits, are certainly not the way to go about it.

Yes modernisation must occur, however for it to be successful, the way to go about it is to fully involve the people at the sharp end of things.

They must also stick to properly negotiated agreements that have already been made in the past and in the case of the current Government, honour the shortfall in our pensions, a pension both myself and my colleagues have been religiously paying our share into over the years. The Thatcher government of the day allowed Royal Mail to take a pensions holiday for 13 years during the good times when the pension pot was overflowing, with no thought for the future when the inevitable bad times come around.

You say the world has moved on and strikes solve nothing, in that case can I ask just what we are supposed to do as a last resort, which this is?

The alternative is for yet another great British institution and vital public service to go the way of so many others in the past. Once it’s gone, there won’t be any return.

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