Royal Mail secret plot with “the Shareholder”

[goinpostal]

Royal Mail secret plot with “the Shareholder”
Red Postie

BBC Newsnight on Thursday revealed a leaked confidential document spilling the beans on a Royal Mail plan to impose cuts, provoke a strike and smash the union. This blows a hole in their of spin over the past couple of weeks about an uncooperative union!

The document, marked “in strictest confidence” and dated way back to 24 September, shows there is no deal possible, RM plans to go for nothing less than 100% of its demands, imposing cuts “with or without union engagement” and making a “demonstration of resolve through dispute – strikes don’t work.”

Postal bosses shed crocodile tears for the cameras about how the strikes would hurt the public and lose Royal Mail business. The leaked doc showed they’re perfectly happy to let the dispute rip: “demonstration of commercial impact of dispute – strikes make things worse – the more we can demonstrate this to our people the better.”

And when it comes to valuing its workers, the doc states that if the CWU doesn’t agree “a deal on our terms” then a “programme of reducing relationship with union” (ie derecognising it) is on the cards. One tactic is to withdraw agreed facility time for union area reps and fulltime officials, to try to cripple the running of the strike.

“A new relationship with our people is non-negotiable and will happen anyway, with or without union agreement.”

Then the real bombshell: if the CWU refuses to agree “we have positioned things in such a way as there is shareholder, customer and internal support for implementation of change without agreement.” Of course the only shareholder is the Labour government! Predictably Royal Mail bosses and Labour have said they know nothing about it.

A Labour MP on Newsnight tried to distract from this by saying “we all, the whole public, are the shareholders” but that’s just ridiculous. The document said “the shareholder”, we all know who that is! Its been clear since 2007 if not before that Labour is in cahoots with the Crozier management – after all they appointed him!

Billy Hayes gave a credible defence of why postal workers were striking, but he also tried to show Royal Mail wasn’t serious about talks because it refused ACAS or government intervention – but that should be the last thing we want, both would tilt 100% towards Royal Mail’s modernisation demands. Anyway it’s now clear they are intervening – by backing Royal Mail’s union-busting to the hilt! But most posties knew that.

The embarrassing bit was when the Newsnight presenter repeatedly asked Billy how he felt about the CWU giving £7 million since 2001 to Labour to have it plotting against it, and did he support the 98% of London postal workers who had voted to break from Labour? Labour-lovin’ Billy ducked it several times before lamely saying the party wasn’t the same as the government.

The offices were buzzing on Friday with news of this treachery from Labour, and concern as it hit home how nasty this management is willing to get. More than ever postal workers realise that our whole union is at stake, and are more determined than ever to see through the strike to defend it.

The message is loud and clear: there is no deal on the cards or help from the government – quite the opposite they are stabbing us in the back! No more delay. Let’s strike, and strike the Labour Party off our books.

[Big Daz]

The only way to support decent Labour MP's without supporting government by default is to break the link.

The Party has shown it is unable to produce a government that governs in line with proper Labour values.

Taking into account the parliment being dissolvedfor the next GE and more shut down time for holidays there is proably no more than 4 months for the Government to fufill its manifesto obligations towards RM and it's staff.

[stokes11eg]

Still think this 'leaked' document is a wind up. Who leaked it? R/M should remember that even without Unions we do have LEGAL rights, and are not afraid to fight for them .With or without the Unions.

[goinpostal]

Good point Big Daz, we can have a debate about who to support, whether to build a new party and all that but to support Labour is to support the government. Royal Mail can remove facility time and stuff like that, down to the legal minimum.

[Fred B]

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[opgpat]

It's not a windup as Mandleson seemed fully briefed on some of the details and defended them in an interview on the day it was leaked. So for delivery workers apart from RM imposing staff cuts without ANY union or worker consultation the other key issues are:

Introduce a 'Must Complete' rule where you can't finish on your time but have to complete the duty - no matter how long it takes

Cut d2d payments completely loosing posties 20-30 pounds per week

Remove Defined Area Supplement from the wage packet and have performance supplements instead.

If the performance supplement is worked out like the other bonus scheme we had (where we got nothing) it looks like we will lose on average 25-40 quid per week? Does that sound correct?