Stand by the CWU

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http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/inde ... by_the_cwu

MORNING Star readers may have become used to urgent appeals to support our paper's Fighting Fund towards the end of each monthly campaign.

This month is an exception, following the first day of October's appeal, which opened in a very low-key mood yesterday and also coincided with the reopening of the Communication Workers Union strike action.

The Morning Star does, of course, support the CWU in its battle to safeguard not only its members' jobs, wages and pensions but also the Royal Mail as a much-loved public corporation.

Royal Mail bosses claim that their aim is nothing more than "modernisation" in a liberalised postal services market.

But they have made no secret of their determination to privatise a slimmed-down, big-business-oriented outfit that will open itself up to shareholders and let Royal Mail directors pay themselves the kind of salaries and bonuses that have already provoked disgust at other privatised public companies.

And the price of this privatisation heaven will be paid by staff through mass redundancies, a below-inflation pay rise and worsened working conditions.

The Royal Mail issues pious statements about no-one benefiting from strike action and handing business to competitors, but what alternative does a union have when an employer refuses to reconsider plans that will have a disastrous effect on its members' lives?

The Morning Star is clear on the basic reason for this problem. It is the shared passion of new Labour and the European Union for neoliberalism, at the heart of which lies fully liberalised markets.

It makes no sense, in terms of public service, to break up national postal delivery services, allow privateers to cherry-pick the most profitable sectors and encourage dog-eat-dog competition between national carriers and their private competitors.

But it does make sense if you are a speculator who is keen to profit from investments based on EU-dictated directives on postal liberalisation and provision of services that represent a race to the bottom, in which pay and conditions norms will be dictated by companies based in Latvia.

Gravy-train politicians in Brussels and Strasbourg may deny the reality of EU priorities.

They may even fool themselves that the EU commission, which puts out a consistent stream of neoliberal directives, is simply an arena of struggle rather than a united, coherent and unequivocal champion of competition over co-operation, but the facts dictate otherwise.

Our postal workers, in common with other workers threatened by unfair competition, need funding for their industry and political backing for their case against privatisation.

The Morning Star will be the only daily newspaper that stands four-square with the posties in this dispute, as in so many others.

We know that our regular readers back this stance, which is why they back the one daily paper that's different.

But we cannot provide that alternative socialist voice on the basis of fresh air. Our Fighting Fund has to be sustained when there is no daily postal delivery.

And that means asking all our supporters to phone our Fund organiser Mac O'Connell on (020) 8510-0815 to give to the Fighting Fund by credit card and to ensure that the Star remains there to put the case for all working people.