Will there or should there be a ballot for National Strike?

[Darren Bent]

I don't think striking is good idea in those situation when thousands of people lose their jobs each day.

I would suggest we should refuse to do overtime for a month.

[BELIAL]

Or we could all refuse to smile for eight hours each day , that would soon bring them to their knees

[DGP1]

Or we could all refuse to smile for eight hours each day , that would soon bring them to their knees

I also do that already the list of things I can do outside my normal day is shrinking rapidly

[Martin Walsh]

Whilst I understand peoples concerns about strike action the fact is it works and is far more effective and easier to control then working to rule , working properly or overtime bans.

Whilst we are not at the point where we can ballot nationally over Royal Mail`s jobs cuts and modernisation plans I dont believe we are far off.

Look you will play into Royal Mail`s hands if you choose not to ballot for Industrial action. Doing your job properly is very easy to break. What if Royal Mail decide to take you off pay becuase they calculate you should have done more work. This is what happened in Streatham and watford during the last dispute. Whilst the streatham members got their money back at an industrial tribunal it was almost 12 months after and there was no judgement as the chair of the tribunal recommended Royal Mail did a settlement so there is no case law.

It happened in streatham`s case a number of times whereby an idivudal bought work back after their shift only for management to say they should have worked harder based on the indoor workload tool and then took their whole days pay off them. After a few ocassions they had enough and walked out and led to the unofficial dispute in London during the late stages of the national dispute in 2007.

So what happens if they choose to do it in offices to discourage staff from contiuing then we are going to end up with widespread unofficial action. I have been involved in plenty of unofficial action in the past and whilst it can be effective no one neither the union or Royal Mail control widespread unoffical action.

In any case we not only fighting Royal Mails current savings but there future plans for delivery staff which is to adopt the dutch delivery model which has 84 % part time staff and where part time contracts are limited to 16 hours maximum.

Contrary to popular belief their model is not based on a longer span. In fact it is far worse then that. You see under walk sequencing they wish to automate all machineable mail however there lies the problem. 60% of the mail mainly second class , DSA and mail sort will be walk sequenced from mid night howver the 40% of mail which is first and distant mail is not cleared until 0440 in the mail centre. So by the time this mail is walk sequenced it will not arrive in delivery offices until between 10 30 and 11 oclock. Off course no one can go out until this 40% connects and becuase most of the work will be sequence not all staff will need to commence at 0600 as only packets and flats will need to be merge into the work.

Furthermore Royal Mail and in particular mark Higson wants to ruthlessly enfore a two oclock last letter. So if the work arrives at 11 and you cannot go past 2 then your walk will be appox 2 .5 hours with travelling time. Hence a part time job.

For mail centres they will face closures and Royal Mail are bringing in crash sorting where mail centres no longer break down the outward work in the same way but send it onto the recieving mail centes so staff can concentrate on the inward. The inward will then be automated where possible and will mean less mail centre jobs. The other thing is in Holland mail centres have only 2 shifts 1800 to midnight and midnight to 0600.

In network there will be less runs as the mail centres introduce crash sorting. The other thing is there will be less collections.

So this is the industrial fight and this is why the cwu have a policy not to give up any savings and this is why we will have to be balloted.

We have no choice we either fight Royal Mail`s plans or we let them turn our job into a part time job . Remember we have the worst employment laws of any european country and legaly an employer only has to give 90 days notice of reducing full time hours.

We will not change Royal Mails plans by overtime bans or working properly it will only be changed by refusing to give up savings and striking.

[borders]

well said Dingo, i think that goes a long way to explaining what a serious situation we have here.