Up the road, believe me if we have professionals doing our negotations then thay would not make the union any better. In fact in my belief it would make us weaker as these proffesionals would no longer be accountable to the membership as they will have contracts of employment which will mean they dont face an election of the membership.
Every fighting union of which the CWU , RMT and the Fire Brigades union are the 3 main ones , have one thing in common those who are elected as officers have all done the job of the members which they negotiate for and understand the job and the expectation.
Now you moan about the CWU a lot but lets examine our selves and our record over the last few years.
This union defeated privitisiation 3 times including when the tories tried it , no other union has done it once. It has defeated teamworking , it has defeated joint ventures.
The CWU have improved basic pay in a massive way doubling wages from 1998 , it has introudced the 5 day week an ambition for over 60 years .
Plus in the last few years achieved the profesional drivers agreement which is the envy of the trade union movement. It agreed a process for dealing with surplus of staff MTSF which has meant no complusory redundancies , and protection of allowances.
It had the 51st rating for London weighting amongst compaines in 2000 and now is the second behind the Met Police.
In 2007 we had 8 days action which stopped Royal Mail introducing their plans to make a martini workforce where they would do anything at anytime in any place.
Remember they wanted people to work two hours before or after your duty on a daily basis , drive a vehicle providing its legal regardless of what your duty is , lifting the cap on door to door without any remuneration , longer saturdays , later starts and monthly pay , new harsher conduct and attendance procdures and revisions introduced without negotations ,cease early shift allowances , remove 2nd class from less efficient , cease time bonus and cut PBS bonus.
We stopped all of that and whilst the agreement we struck was not ideal it was a damm sight less then Royal Mail wanted and thats why they are attacking us like never before now. Whatsmore we are hitting back and still fighting.
Look the CWU is the strongest union in the country. It takes the most action . This is not in doubt.
Up the road you seem frustrated that we have not balloted nationally yet and i think we all share that frustration. But first and foremost London and Scotland and others held the CWU postion on no savings , and in london we had a policy that if they took executive action in one office in London we would ballot the whole of London.
We kept our word and produced a 91% yes vote which was a great result. We took action becuase we have to as Royal Mail are introducing more revisons every week without agreement we now have over 50 offices where revisons have been introduced with another 30 statements of intent. We have seen people moved off their walks to create outdoor absorbtion. We have had indviduals taken off pay for simply not being able to complete , we also have mail centres where our work is being diverted not only on strike days but every day of the week. We have drivers taken off their collections to do delivery work , we have mail centre staff being moved to deliveries. In addition today we have Postman and women removed from their duties in SW1 and told to go to Putney to deliver some miles away.
The attacks keep coming at us , and the bullying by management is still continuing.
Faced with these attacks how can we take a breather and wait for the National Ballot. There is no chance of that happening especially in the offices which are being attacked. If we did then the chances are we would all be unofficial within days due to offices being attacked.
So whilst it is your right to critcise as you pay your dues , i dont think you see the bigger picture this is not a fight of our choosing but its a fight which we cant duck.
This Friday when the strike action in London takes place we have more people out across the UK then when we had the day of action on the 17th July including the National Distrubition centre which will have a big impact on the whole network as almost all work goes through there
Remember Royal Mail are doing everything they can to cause an unofficial dispute because they cannot afford to let the dispute drag on into September as that becomes our time when they become under more pressure.
We will win this dispute but as in most disputes there are lots of twists and turns and plenty of high and lows but we have never faced a battle in which we needed to win as much as this fight otherwise we might as well put the white flag up on every cwu office in the country.
. The london division showed what could be acheived with a lot of hard work from area and local reps a 90%+ yes vote for action, my office could of agreed a deal a while ago but refused and now have EA in our office, we need to stick together and get a national agreement.
