https://labourhub.org.uk/2024/11/23/pos ... wo-fronts/
On 13th November the Post Office announced its intention to close 115 post offices, which would mean 1,000 redundancies. This is the latest in a long programme of closures, though a much bigger tranche than previously.
The announcement came as a result of a review by Nigel Railton, Chair of the Post Office, conducted since May. It was leaked to the London Evening Standard before the official announcement, meaning not just the public, but also those who work in those post offices heard the news first from the media. Worse, a management briefing for staff held the day of the announcement didn’t even mention the closure programme.
The union representing post office staff, the Communications Workers Union (CWU), was not invited to participate in the review, nor has it been permitted to date to see the accounts to check the Post Office’s claim that it is losing £60 million a year.
The Post Office had the cheek to say that the closures were for the benefit of staff: “The Post Office has a 360-year history of public service and today we want to secure that service for the future by learning from past mistakes and moving forward for the benefit of all postmasters.
“We can, and will, restore pride in working for a business with a legacy of service, rather than one of scandal.
“The value postmasters deliver in their communities must be reflected in their pockets, and this Transformation Plan provides a route to adding more than £250million annually to total postmaster remuneration by 2030, subject to government funding.”
The scandal referred to is, of course, the Horizon scandal where Post Office management bullied, harassed and prosecuted post office workers over claims they had stolen money which had in fact disappeared into the faulty computer system. To claim that the closures is somehow to the benefit of postmasters takes an enormous amount of chutzpah.
At the same time, there is a government review of the future of the Post Office. Clearly the announcement by Railton is meant to pre-empt this.
The closures of post offices that have taken place in the part have either meant complete closure, or a post office counter in the corner of a shop. Many former post offices have been left empty, blighting high streets for years. Even when a private company takes over the running of post office business, there is no compulsion for them to continue indefinitely,
The CWU has called on the government to stop the closures and look at innovative ways to develop the network of post offices. The Post Office, unlike Royal Mail, is still publicly owned. For the government to allow these closures to go ahead would be yet another sign that it is continuing with austerity and privatisation.
Most of those listed for closure are busy ones in town centres that would be a real loss to the community. Petitions against closure have already started in some places, and a campaign could take off in the same way that the one about the threat to close ticket offices at stations did. The CWU has previously campaigned against such closures with mixed success, but the size of this programme should make it easier to have a national, not just a localised, campaign, linking trade union, users and local Councillors.
A few days after the announcement of post office closures, the owners of Royal Mail, International Distribution Services, announced they were considering further job cuts and an increase in the – already exorbitant – price of stamps, despite having achieved an operating profit this year.
While there are no concrete plans yet for redundancies – though Royal Mail has been losing large numbers of staff in recent years through resignations – the CWU needs to draw up plans for resistance rather than go with the usual ‘no compulsory redundancies’ approach. Postal services around the country are already collapsing due to lack of staff; further cuts would only make things worse.
This only makes more obvious the mistake the CWU leadership is making in dropping the call for the government to bring Royal Mail back into public ownership, instead hoping that any new owner will treat the workforce nicely. Apparently this is because Keir Starmer has turned his back on renationalisation, but the answer to that ought to be building a campaign with public support, rather than self-censorship.
One of the problems this dual attack highlights is how much of a mistake it is to have Royal Mail and the Post office as separate entities. Apparently, Britain is the only country which has done that. Renationalisation could be accompanied by bringing them back together as one public service.
Pete Firmin is a retired postal worker and CWU member.
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Postal workers facing attacks on two fronts
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Postal workers facing attacks on two fronts
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Re: Postal workers facing attacks on two fronts
A discussion of a how to organise joint opposition to mass jobs cuts at the Post Office and Royal Mail is very welcome.
I did post a WSWS article on this very subject on this News column directly after the announcement was made by Post Office interim chair Nigel Railton of the plans to shut the remaining 115 Crown offices and threat to 1,000 jobs. I’ve included it below.
For reasons not explained to me Admin moved this to the Post Office section only. The article by Labour Hub (LH) posted here was published almost a fortnight after the event.
The LH article essentially toes the official CWU line that something other than a “fully franchising model” can be expected from Labour’s review as opposed to Railton’s “Transformation Plan.”
The WSWS article cites Labour’s postal affairs Minister Gareth Thomas stating a “fully franchised network” is the government’s stated position which it has been working on with the trade unions.
Ward has positively embraced the Kretinsky take-over of RM. The CWU finally came out after months of secret talks and admitted it was always a done deal under the Labour government with Ward stating he is looking forward to a “fresh start.”
A joint fight by Post Office and Royal Mail workers to defend jobs and conditions can only be developed by the rank and file in opposition to the CWU-Labour government line up for austerity and prioritising the profits of private equity firms such as EP Group.
Post Office in Britain announces plans to close 115 branches and cut thousands of jobs
Tony Robson
15 November 2024
The Post Office has announced plans this week to close more than a hundred of its remaining Crown office branches threatening 1,000 jobs.
The Financial Times (FT) stated bluntly, “The company said on Wednesday that it would seek to offload 115 branches to retail partners or sub-postmasters, placing 1,000 jobs at risk. The branches may be closed if new operators are not found.”
Royal Mail van, outside the Axminster post office [Photo by Felix O / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0]
This was based on the announcement by Post Office interim chair Nigel Railton of a five-year Transformation Plan following a Strategic Review in May.
The plan accelerates the government’s cost-cutting drive for slashing state funding going back to the break-up of the postal service in 2012. The cashier and retail services were separated from collection, sorting and delivery of letters and parcels by Royal Mail to ram through privatisation of the latter in 2013.
The Post Office has been run arms-length by the government through UK Government Investments, a body controlling a portfolio of wholly or partially state-owned companies such as NatWest bank and Channel 4 News.
The “fully franchising model” which the Transformation Plan aims to complete is privatisation under a different name. Crown offices now account for only 1 percent of Post Office branches, just 115, down from over 373 in 2012.
Major supermarkets and other retail chains have been contracted by government to operate around 2,000 branches within their stores, with sub-postmasters running a further 9,000 branches. Annual losses of £30 million in the Crown Network are cited as justification for massive cost-cutting, with government refusing to provide what amounts to a relative pittance to maintain the service.
The Labour government is signalling that relentless market “reforms” pursued under the Conservatives will be completed, part of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to be “the most pro-business government in history.”
When the Transformation Plan was announced by Railton at a meeting with Post Office staff at 9 a.m. on Wednesday there was no reference to the closure plans threatening a thousand jobs at Crown offices. Postmasters only found out later in the day as the details were reported to the media.
Railton has plumbed new depths of cynicism in marketing the ending of all state-owned branches as a “New Deal for Postmasters”, pitched specifically to sub-postmasters based on promises of improved renumeration in the fully franchised set-up. This is based on promises to push up average branch pay by around £22,000 after five years according to the FT.
Railton told a press conference on Wednesday, “We can, and will restore pride in working for a business with a legacy of service, rather than scandal.”
The claim that privatising the Post Office and entrenching a franchise model has anything to do with redressing the Horizon scandal is grotesque. The frame-up of more than 900 sub-postmasters for faulty accounting software, designed by Horizon and leased to the Post Office by Fujitsu, was a conspiracy by both Labour and the Conservative governments to protect their partnership with big business. The £1.5 billion IT contract was financed via the private finance initiative (PFI) model introduced by Major’s Conservative government but championed by the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Such parasitic economic and social relations produced the largest miscarriage of justice in UK history. Hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted and blamed for shortfalls incorrectly shown on the system, driving them into financial ruin and railroading hundreds to prison.
Adding insult to injury—and despite pleading poverty—in May this year the Post Office requested an extension of the Horizon IT system for another five years, with Fujitsu receiving an extra £180 million government handout from taxpayers.
A YouGov survey of 1,000 sub-postmasters published in September found that seven in ten had experienced an “unexplained discrepancy” linked to shortfalls.
On Monday, European chief executive of Fujitsu, Paul Patterson, told the official inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal that there had been no discussion with the government about what figure the company would contribute towards the compensation of those framed-up over its malfunctioning IT system.
The dawning recognition that there will be no genuine redress under Labour for the industrial scale frame-up of sub-postmasters, and that no one in senior positions in Fujitsu, the government or Post Office will be held accountable, is feeding into growing anger against the cost-cutting and closure of Crown offices by a government that nakedly serves the corporate oligarchy.
Seeking to head off a political confrontation by postal workers, the BBC, Sky News and Guardian are heavily promoting Dave Ward, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), as a supposed voice of opposition.
Ward stated, “For the company to announce the closure of hundreds of post offices hot on the heels of the Horizon scandal is as tone deaf as its immoral.” He continued, “CWU members are victims of the Horizon scandal and for them to now fear for the jobs ahead of Christmas is yet another cruel attack.”
This is a total fraud on many levels.
The union leadership mounted no struggle of CWU members in the Post Office and at Royal Mail against the mass frame-up of sub-postmasters. The fight to overturn the wrongful convictions and demand compensation was taken up by the Justice for Sub-Postmasters Alliance in 2019 after they had been thrown under the bus by their own association the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters.
The closure of hundreds of Crown post offices is a direct outcome of the CWU’s high-level collusion with privatisation.
The media has amplified Ward’s recent empty bluster, including his call on Labour to come to the rescue and “intervene”.
But Ward’s presentation of Railton’s closure plans as some kind of rogue project has been exposed as myth-making. The FT reports that Labour’s postal affairs minister Gareth Thomas has commissioned a separate review into the Post Office, stating: “We have long held a publicly stated ambition to move to a fully franchised network and we are in dialogue with the unions about future options for DMBs (directly managed branches).”
This “dialogue” between the CWU and the Labour government is aimed at enforcing the dictates of big business against workers.
Among Royal Mail workers, Ward is the discredited lead architect of last year’s sellout national agreement, ending their first national strike in more than a decade. That pro-company agreement ushered in the biggest attack on jobs, terms and conditions in Royal Mail’s history.
This paved the way for a £3.5 billion Royal Mail takeover bid by billionaire Daniel Kretinsky. Ward and other CWU officials have taken part in months of secret “dialogue” with Kretinsky and the Labour government aimed at cementing their partnership in a new “ownership model”.
The Postal Workers Rank and File Committee (PWRFC) has campaigned to mobilise Royal Mail workers against the CWU bureaucracy and its defence of shareholder profits over the fundamental rights of postal workers. The PWRFC has won growing support for a fightback against the system of management intimidation and bullying aided by the CWU and sanctioned by the Falconer Review which stitched-up hundreds of reps and members victimised and sacked during the national strike.
The fight to remove the CWU’s unaccountable bureaucracy requires postal workers to take back control of their struggle and wage a fight against socially destructive drive to maximise profits on behalf of the corporate and financial oligarchy. This must be extended and joined with Post Office staff faced with the brutal austerity agenda of the Starmer Labour government.
I did post a WSWS article on this very subject on this News column directly after the announcement was made by Post Office interim chair Nigel Railton of the plans to shut the remaining 115 Crown offices and threat to 1,000 jobs. I’ve included it below.
For reasons not explained to me Admin moved this to the Post Office section only. The article by Labour Hub (LH) posted here was published almost a fortnight after the event.
The LH article essentially toes the official CWU line that something other than a “fully franchising model” can be expected from Labour’s review as opposed to Railton’s “Transformation Plan.”
The WSWS article cites Labour’s postal affairs Minister Gareth Thomas stating a “fully franchised network” is the government’s stated position which it has been working on with the trade unions.
Ward has positively embraced the Kretinsky take-over of RM. The CWU finally came out after months of secret talks and admitted it was always a done deal under the Labour government with Ward stating he is looking forward to a “fresh start.”
A joint fight by Post Office and Royal Mail workers to defend jobs and conditions can only be developed by the rank and file in opposition to the CWU-Labour government line up for austerity and prioritising the profits of private equity firms such as EP Group.
Post Office in Britain announces plans to close 115 branches and cut thousands of jobs
Tony Robson
15 November 2024
The Post Office has announced plans this week to close more than a hundred of its remaining Crown office branches threatening 1,000 jobs.
The Financial Times (FT) stated bluntly, “The company said on Wednesday that it would seek to offload 115 branches to retail partners or sub-postmasters, placing 1,000 jobs at risk. The branches may be closed if new operators are not found.”
Royal Mail van, outside the Axminster post office [Photo by Felix O / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0]
This was based on the announcement by Post Office interim chair Nigel Railton of a five-year Transformation Plan following a Strategic Review in May.
The plan accelerates the government’s cost-cutting drive for slashing state funding going back to the break-up of the postal service in 2012. The cashier and retail services were separated from collection, sorting and delivery of letters and parcels by Royal Mail to ram through privatisation of the latter in 2013.
The Post Office has been run arms-length by the government through UK Government Investments, a body controlling a portfolio of wholly or partially state-owned companies such as NatWest bank and Channel 4 News.
The “fully franchising model” which the Transformation Plan aims to complete is privatisation under a different name. Crown offices now account for only 1 percent of Post Office branches, just 115, down from over 373 in 2012.
Major supermarkets and other retail chains have been contracted by government to operate around 2,000 branches within their stores, with sub-postmasters running a further 9,000 branches. Annual losses of £30 million in the Crown Network are cited as justification for massive cost-cutting, with government refusing to provide what amounts to a relative pittance to maintain the service.
The Labour government is signalling that relentless market “reforms” pursued under the Conservatives will be completed, part of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to be “the most pro-business government in history.”
When the Transformation Plan was announced by Railton at a meeting with Post Office staff at 9 a.m. on Wednesday there was no reference to the closure plans threatening a thousand jobs at Crown offices. Postmasters only found out later in the day as the details were reported to the media.
Railton has plumbed new depths of cynicism in marketing the ending of all state-owned branches as a “New Deal for Postmasters”, pitched specifically to sub-postmasters based on promises of improved renumeration in the fully franchised set-up. This is based on promises to push up average branch pay by around £22,000 after five years according to the FT.
Railton told a press conference on Wednesday, “We can, and will restore pride in working for a business with a legacy of service, rather than scandal.”
The claim that privatising the Post Office and entrenching a franchise model has anything to do with redressing the Horizon scandal is grotesque. The frame-up of more than 900 sub-postmasters for faulty accounting software, designed by Horizon and leased to the Post Office by Fujitsu, was a conspiracy by both Labour and the Conservative governments to protect their partnership with big business. The £1.5 billion IT contract was financed via the private finance initiative (PFI) model introduced by Major’s Conservative government but championed by the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Such parasitic economic and social relations produced the largest miscarriage of justice in UK history. Hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted and blamed for shortfalls incorrectly shown on the system, driving them into financial ruin and railroading hundreds to prison.
Adding insult to injury—and despite pleading poverty—in May this year the Post Office requested an extension of the Horizon IT system for another five years, with Fujitsu receiving an extra £180 million government handout from taxpayers.
A YouGov survey of 1,000 sub-postmasters published in September found that seven in ten had experienced an “unexplained discrepancy” linked to shortfalls.
On Monday, European chief executive of Fujitsu, Paul Patterson, told the official inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal that there had been no discussion with the government about what figure the company would contribute towards the compensation of those framed-up over its malfunctioning IT system.
The dawning recognition that there will be no genuine redress under Labour for the industrial scale frame-up of sub-postmasters, and that no one in senior positions in Fujitsu, the government or Post Office will be held accountable, is feeding into growing anger against the cost-cutting and closure of Crown offices by a government that nakedly serves the corporate oligarchy.
Seeking to head off a political confrontation by postal workers, the BBC, Sky News and Guardian are heavily promoting Dave Ward, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), as a supposed voice of opposition.
Ward stated, “For the company to announce the closure of hundreds of post offices hot on the heels of the Horizon scandal is as tone deaf as its immoral.” He continued, “CWU members are victims of the Horizon scandal and for them to now fear for the jobs ahead of Christmas is yet another cruel attack.”
This is a total fraud on many levels.
The union leadership mounted no struggle of CWU members in the Post Office and at Royal Mail against the mass frame-up of sub-postmasters. The fight to overturn the wrongful convictions and demand compensation was taken up by the Justice for Sub-Postmasters Alliance in 2019 after they had been thrown under the bus by their own association the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters.
The closure of hundreds of Crown post offices is a direct outcome of the CWU’s high-level collusion with privatisation.
The media has amplified Ward’s recent empty bluster, including his call on Labour to come to the rescue and “intervene”.
But Ward’s presentation of Railton’s closure plans as some kind of rogue project has been exposed as myth-making. The FT reports that Labour’s postal affairs minister Gareth Thomas has commissioned a separate review into the Post Office, stating: “We have long held a publicly stated ambition to move to a fully franchised network and we are in dialogue with the unions about future options for DMBs (directly managed branches).”
This “dialogue” between the CWU and the Labour government is aimed at enforcing the dictates of big business against workers.
Among Royal Mail workers, Ward is the discredited lead architect of last year’s sellout national agreement, ending their first national strike in more than a decade. That pro-company agreement ushered in the biggest attack on jobs, terms and conditions in Royal Mail’s history.
This paved the way for a £3.5 billion Royal Mail takeover bid by billionaire Daniel Kretinsky. Ward and other CWU officials have taken part in months of secret “dialogue” with Kretinsky and the Labour government aimed at cementing their partnership in a new “ownership model”.
The Postal Workers Rank and File Committee (PWRFC) has campaigned to mobilise Royal Mail workers against the CWU bureaucracy and its defence of shareholder profits over the fundamental rights of postal workers. The PWRFC has won growing support for a fightback against the system of management intimidation and bullying aided by the CWU and sanctioned by the Falconer Review which stitched-up hundreds of reps and members victimised and sacked during the national strike.
The fight to remove the CWU’s unaccountable bureaucracy requires postal workers to take back control of their struggle and wage a fight against socially destructive drive to maximise profits on behalf of the corporate and financial oligarchy. This must be extended and joined with Post Office staff faced with the brutal austerity agenda of the Starmer Labour government.