Rumours of a shoddy deal in the post

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Speculation about a deal in Royal Mail are sweeping through the workforce. This follows the local and national strikes last year, which were choked off by the union executive in November.

It’s always best to wait until you get the details before judging a deal, but if the rumours are true then we need to be ready to fight.

The supposed deal will include:

12,000 jobs to go and half the mail centres in Britain to shut—this would be a crime against the membership.

Extra payments for door to door delivery (“junk mail”) to go, replaced by a £30 a week rise—does this mean different rates for different postal workers?

40 minutes off the working week—ok, but what happened to the 35 hour gross working week?

No nationally fixed time for how long you are out on delivery. It could be three or four or five hours and will come down to local agreement.

Saturday to be a normal working day—this will be the biggest sticking point for many.

Lots of postal workers resent working weekends anyway, but they get away a bit earlier than normal.

They will be appalled at their Saturdays being ruined.

It might be a bit repetitive to keep asking—but was it really right to call off the strikes, when we had huge momentum and real pressure on the bosses and the government, for this?

The union needs to tell members as much as possible as soon as it can. At the moment lots of people feel we’re in the dark and we can’t have a proper discussion.


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