Postal strike: tactics and next moves

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/2 ... l-mail-cwu

Postal strike: tactics and next moves



* Tim Webb
* The Guardian, Wednesday 21 October 2009
* Article history

Royal Mail

Royal Mail insists that sidelining the CWU is not its intention, but at the weekend, it announced it was taking on 30,000 temporary staff to help clear the backlog of undelivered items. Part of Royal Mail's public relations offensive – supported by the business secretary, Lord Mandelson – is to repeat that the CWU's actions are "irresponsible" and seriously damaging to the business. This week it agreed to the CWU's suggestion of talks under the auspices of conciliation service Acas – but only if the union called off the strikes and without itself agreeing to any conditions. So far, Royal Mail shows no signs of softening. Continued opposition from the CWU could provide the pretext to start making compulsory redundancies, which would clearly escalate the dispute.

The CWU

It probably wasn't the most helpful of comparisons for Billy Hayes, general secretary of the CWU, to liken himself to Arthur Scargill over the weekend. In a recent interview with the Guardian, his deputy, Dave Ward, stressed the union is prepared to compromise over new sorting machines. "We know we can't stop the machines coming," he said. The CWU is keen to portray this not as a dispute over "Spanish practices" – allowing postal workers to knock off early – but about the future direction of Royal Mail itself. Last week it offered what it called a "peace deal" to Royal Mail, which mostly amounted to a repeat of its demands to be consulted over modernisation. Many post workers feel they have little to lose from further one-day stoppages if they are going to lose their jobs anyway, or that conditions will become so bad that they end up leaving.