National Briefing on Post office liberalisation, CWU Recruit

[AndyK]

National Briefing on Post office liberalisation, CWU Recruiting and the
Business Pension Proposal
Tuesday 19th Wednesday 20th February 2008


Jane Loftus opened the second day of the briefing, and thanked everyone for attending, she then handed over to Dave Ward who would give an in depth overview of the current position on Pensions, before doing so Lynne Brown would give a presentation on the current recruitment review.

Dave Ward,

Dave explained that this morning is about the Union and its future. We had to look at our own recruitment process and the strategies we currently used to recruit.

Lynne Brown.

Lynne started her presentation by pointing out the there were over 30,295 non members currently working within our postal industry. All of whom were potential members. Headquarters had recently started a recruitment campaign within the Romec part of the business and that they were trying to address a problem that had arisen with members with small hourage contracts of employment, some of these members had contracts of less than 10 hours per week, however this would not get in the way of us recruiting. It was hoped that
Imminently a recruitment campaign would be started with the same vain within the Quadrant part of the industry. We are after all the CWU we are the Union of the postal worker, we are the union that puts organising and recruitment at the forefront of our minds,

We need to grow and we should be doing so even against a background of reducing postal services, with 30 plus potential members and all the other industries out there crying out for a good Union. We need to be out there in the units talking to the non members and recruiting them to our Union, we should be visiting Call Centres and Mailing houses that are near to our units and recruiting these people. We can and should visit TNT DHL Fedex, UPS and anyone else that moves, delivers or processes mail in any way.

To assist with this we had recently appointed a number of Recruitment Ambassadors up and down the country, who would be trained in recruitment both inside and outside of the current Branch Structure. They would also be trained to recruit outside of the industry.

We also had to look at the use of portable memberships so if our members left the industry to work in another they could take their membership with them.

Lynne concluded her report and the chair opened the meeting up to questions



PENSIONS

DAVE WARD

Dave opened this section of the briefing by explaining, that our Union had been successful in securing a review of the Postal Industry, and that this was one of the main reasons for seeking Royal Mail to re-consider its position on Pensions. No one was suggesting that a pensions review was not needed we were just saying that It is logical to leave the pensions argument until after to review, and we believe this is a legitimate request.

We accept that there is a need for a Pensions review, but unlike Royal Mail we are looking to retain a Final Salary pension scheme, Royal Mail have intimated that they would consider this if we would consider a cap on the pensionable pay that we receive. Bearing in mind what we have achieved with our pensionable pay over the last few years we cannot and will not accept this, we will continue to look positively to seek further concessions.

We also sought other alternatives, one of which was an increase in individual contributions, we firmly believe that Unite have the same feelings on the pensions issue as us, and we intend to seek a joint approach with them on the matter of pensions as a whole. If we are going to take on the employer then any support for our joint cause is worth while.

RAY ELLIS

Ray reported that the feedback headquarters had received during the last month or so had been good and of high quality, there was a clear indication that our members understood reform of some sort was needed, and also that the current Royal Mail stance did not meet the aspirations of the CWU membership.

It was also clear that different thing effected different people in different ways older age being one factor, and those concerns not being shared by the younger members.

Numerous correspondences had referred to increases in their own contributions and this had been something that we had ruled out early in our negotiations, maybe now was the time to reflect on this particular issue.

A number of people had expressed concern over the issue of the C.A.R.E scheme and Ray made it clear that this had not been agreed or accepted.

The key date for Royal Mail was clearly the 1st April they had put all their eggs into the one basket and the biggest proportion of their targeted savings were from this pensions scheme change, this has been despite the fact that they agreed to a consultation process, and ignored virtually everything that has been said to them, we do not believe they have been honest in this approach and they have had little if any positive response from any quarter since their ill conceived ideas came about.

Whatever small changes/ concessions have been made have been achieved by the union exerting pressure, we needed to keep this pressure up both industrially and politically

DAVE WARD

We are now at a point where we have two options

Option one, get behind the policy to get a better deal using the government review and on the back of this move for an Industrial Action Ballot, with this option we have to be 100% certain that we can produce an overwhelming yes vote. We firmly believe we have the arguments and the support to do this.

Option two, We put Royal Mails proposal to the membership in a ballot with a recommendation of No, obviously with our reasons for a no vote, this will most definitely up the Anti with Royal Mail and clearly indicate to them how serious this matter is. With this option we would also seek the support of Unite to take the same line.

Contributions from the floor were sought with most if not all contributions
Applauding the Executives stance and supporting option two. This would at least give our members the opportunity to further understand the problems we were having and would allow Royal Mail some time to rethink their position.

Some of the contributions were:-

“ It was a welcome report, we needed to take the employer on, on this matterâ€

[AndyK]

Option one, get behind the policy to get a better deal using the government review and on the back of this move for an Industrial Action Ballot, with this option we have to be 100% certain that we can produce an overwhelming yes vote. We firmly believe we have the arguments and the support to do this.

Option two, We put Royal Mails proposal to the membership in a ballot with a recommendation of No, obviously with our reasons for a no vote, this will most definitely up the Anti with Royal Mail and clearly indicate to them how serious this matter is. With this option we would also seek the support of Unite to take the same line.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

It does look like they are up for a fight but I don't think getting the backing for a strike is going to be as easy as last time. They way the handled the strike last time has left a lot of members disillusioned with the leadership. At least that's the impression I am getting at my DO.