Don't give up on the Union

[Roy Mayall]

First of all all of those people who are threatening to leave the union should stop and think about it. Stay put. If you leave you have no influence, the union will die, and the management will have won.

Then there has to be a massive no vote for this agreement. It's a complete and utter mess. It addresses none of our issues. It covers everything up in platitudes and vagaries. It amounts to a pay reduction. It uses union reps as management enforcers. It divides part-time from full-time. It means delivering more of what the public don't want, namely D2D. It means a massive sell-off of public building in the sale of delivery offices. That's a real-estate grab. It is being forced through by a neoliberal agenda controlled by the banking sector, and the union, meanwhile, is just rolling on its back and playing dead.

The central issue, to me, is downstream access. If you look at what profits the Royal Mail network is generating, not just for ourselves, but for all the DSA companies that are riding on the back of our network, you'll see that the postal industry as a whole is very, very healthy. The problem is that, with government sanction, we are giving our profits away. That's the issue the union should be fighting on. If we refuse to deliver DSA mail, that's the end of DSA, but no one in the union is contemplating that either because they don't have the imagination, or because they are too cowardly to take the fight all the way to its natural conclusion.

No one is arguing against modernisation: what we need is modernisation which serves us and our customers, not a false modernisation which is only serving the interests of the banking elite, grinding down the workforce in order to extract every penny from us.

The government bailed out the banks, but it doesn't need to bail out the Royal Mail. The Royal Mail is fundamentally sound. People will always need a postal service. We just need the legislative fetters removed so we can crush the opposition. What we need is a union with enough balls to challenge the government, to issue a simple order to its membership to refuse to deliver DSA mail. We don't even need to strike. We just have to rediscover the fundamental principles of solidarity with each other, to refuse to accept that these private companies have the right to extract profit from our labour without giving us anything in return. It's a free ride. We deliver their mail. They don't have to give us pensions or benefits or even bother to pay us the market rate.

Have you noticed this? D2D is now filtered through the private mail companies. Take a look at the boxes when they come in. It's TNT and UKMail etc etc. That means there's enough spare profit in the business to pay the private mail companies for D2D before it even gets to the Royal Mail, before we take our crummy pittance at the end.

They are cutting our D2D money so TNT can get more profit.

Now ask yourselves why the union haven't noticed this?

[coxie]

hes right, this agreement cannot come into place without a yes vote, so if it gets a yes vote we cant blame them only our fellow union members who voted yes because of the bonus they are entitled to anyway

[AnotherLimey]

Wise words as ever Roy, can't argue with a word of it

[Pat Ostman]

The Union AGREED to it, and the PEC also ratified the agreement.

Yes I am thinking about leaving the union, if this is the best they can come up with, they are already dead.

[Dogs of War]

EDITED

[el_cartero]

Roy dave and billy have taken a back hander on this agreement.

what if they did? is that illegal?

[MinisterofCucumber]

Can we get rid of DSA and still comply with the EU Postal Directive?

[Pat Ostman]

Can we get rid of DSA and still comply with the EU Postal Directive?

no

[pdmdanny]

First of all all of those people who are threatening to leave the union should stop and think about it. Stay put. If you leave you have no influence, the union will die, and the management will have won.

Then there has to be a massive no vote for this agreement. It's a complete and utter mess. It addresses none of our issues. It covers everything up in platitudes and vagaries. It amounts to a pay reduction. It uses union reps as management enforcers. It divides part-time from full-time. It means delivering more of what the public don't want, namely D2D. It means a massive sell-off of public building in the sale of delivery offices. That's a real-estate grab. It is being forced through by a neoliberal agenda controlled by the banking sector, and the union, meanwhile, is just rolling on its back and playing dead.

The central issue, to me, is downstream access. If you look at what profits the Royal Mail network is generating, not just for ourselves, but for all the DSA companies that are riding on the back of our network, you'll see that the postal industry as a whole is very, very healthy. The problem is that, with government sanction, we are giving our profits away. That's the issue the union should be fighting on. If we refuse to deliver DSA mail, that's the end of DSA, but no one in the union is contemplating that either because they don't have the imagination, or because they are too cowardly to take the fight all the way to its natural conclusion.

No one is arguing against modernisation: what we need is modernisation which serves us and our customers, not a false modernisation which is only serving the interests of the banking elite, grinding down the workforce in order to extract every penny from us.

The government bailed out the banks, but it doesn't need to bail out the Royal Mail. The Royal Mail is fundamentally sound. People will always need a postal service. We just need the legislative fetters removed so we can crush the opposition. What we need is a union with enough balls to challenge the government, to issue a simple order to its membership to refuse to deliver DSA mail. We don't even need to strike. We just have to rediscover the fundamental principles of solidarity with each other, to refuse to accept that these private companies have the right to extract profit from our labour without giving us anything in return. It's a free ride. We deliver their mail. They don't have to give us pensions or benefits or even bother to pay us the market rate.

Have you noticed this? D2D is now filtered through the private mail companies. Take a look at the boxes when they come in. It's TNT and UKMail etc etc. That means there's enough spare profit in the business to pay the private mail companies for D2D before it even gets to the Royal Mail, before we take our crummy pittance at the end.

They are cutting our D2D money so TNT can get more profit.

Now ask yourselves why the union haven't noticed this?

This needs to be sent to every union member urgently !!!!!!!!

[Stormproof]

Another well thought out arguement Roy DSA delivery by us has to stop or at least double the price they are paying now.

[Pat Ostman]

Are we not forgetting our Union's complicity in all this?

[Roy Mayall]

Can we get rid of DSA and still comply with the EU Postal Directive?

No we can't. We have to challenge the law on this. Just because it's law doesn't mean it's right. Law and justice are not the same thing. DSA is an EU directive created by an EU central bureaucracy to funnel profits to the private mail companies. It is against our interest and we should refuse to comply.

[el_cartero]

Lets give the CWU a chance to say ok LOOK we messed up. everyone makes mistakes.

Give them another chance of negotiating a deal.

Or did they actually sign on the dottet line?

[Roy Mayall]

Are we not forgetting our Union's complicity in all this?

No we're not forgetting that. We should challenge that. What we shouldn't do is leave the union and make it even more subject to management control.

[Roy Mayall]

Lets give the CWU a chance to say ok LOOK we messed up.

Give them another chance of negotiating a deal.

Or did they actually sign on the dottet line?

They haven't signed anything yet. They can't until we've voted on it and ratified it. That's the difference between the union and the management. We still have nominal control in our union. It still belongs to us.