Thanks for posting that up norwichchris and the comments, of all stripes
The article is written by a rep in consultation with other postal workers, who work for a living and are in unions like most members of Workers Power, which is a Socialist group.
It lays out the fact that a rotten deal like 2009 is brewing, and that postal workers should ensure they get organised to have a say, not just a vote weeks down the line which is a real possibility.By then any strike momentum will be stone cold dead and much more difficult to revive - like in 2009. Seems reasonable and democratic, certainly many posties i've talked to thought so. The article doesn't just state this as some airy fairy political viewpoint but tries to relate it to our experience of the last couple of disputes.
I suspect the real dividing line is whether it was possible to fight marketisation and privatisation, our leadership certainly thought not (unless you count postcards, early day motions, meetings with MPs at Westminster, the odd protest as a fight!). The leadership under Dave Ward and Billy Hayes committed themselves to living with both, accepting downsizing and adopting the management word for it 'modernisation'.They accepted flexibility, efficiency drives, pension cuts etc in return for pay. Its worth remembering that rather than just a "fringe" rejecting this a third voted against both deals. Now Ward and Hayes are about to do it again, but even worse this time. I'd argue that if you just think all this was inevitable and we couldn't fight it then or now, well, as the top table has been telling us for a couple of months now,it is also inevitable that lots of us will have to find jobs at TNT sooner rather than later.
A second question is whether its la la land that the rank and file could get organised. The left (Post Worker (swp) and Broad left (sp)) in the CWU has a terrible record of avoiding any criticism of the leaderships's strategy over the last few years, or even praising them at times, and never building any grassroots organisation. But look at the massive vote for Jerry Hicks in Unite, who stood on the workers wage and the idea that "members decide, officials provide" in disputes, not the other way around. He got 80,000 votes, 40% in total, in the general secretary election without any backing from the bureaucracy, travelling the country by megabus etc. Is it really so far fetched that a credible candidate could stand from militant areas like London, Liverpool, Bristol etc and win a sizable backing? Or that if those branches or militants from them called an unofficial meeting it would get a real response, like the London unofficial meeting before the opening of the postal market in 2006? There was hundreds of people there.
We have another example from our own union. when London division organised a ballot of its members back in 2010 and well over 95% voted to disaffiliate from Labour. Yet at every conference votes to democratise the fund, much less set up a new party, are defeated by heavy majorities. That shows the way that the grassroots members desires are blocked, but certainly could be and should be organised and expressed. We haven't made that breakthrough yet, that's for sure, but under privatisation it is more important than ever that the rank and file get organised and the unions build a party that will actually fight privatisation, cuts, austerity.
Anyways we'll see about the deal but there is already quite alot of detail put down there as its basis and it doesn't look good in terms of the pension, no strike deal, etc. Certainly I think we could all agree that there are huge risks in the detail that has come out about the possible deal, given our experience of 2007 and 2009?
