The postal dispute was bound to get bloody: egged on by the regulator Postcomm, Royal Mail executives are bent on marketising a public service.
Gregor Gall
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October 10, 2007 8:00 AM | Printable version
It is worth remembering the Royal Mail dispute started back in early June this year. Several one-day and rolling strikes have already occurred, followed by nearly five weeks of talks, which failed to produce sufficient advance to prevent the present, further strike action.
And this is despite the Communication Workers' Union then considerably upping the ante by closing down the network for nearly a week, and despite talks taking place during the strike - quite an unusual phenomenon these days when managers say, "we won't talk unless you come back to work."
What lies behind this protracted dispute?
On the Royal Mail side, the intent is to have what is known as a "reforming confrontation". This means that the company wants to take on, face down and beat the union. In so doing, it wants to inflict such a grave defeat on the union that the union is then unable to resist any future management diktat because the union is so demoralised. Royal Mail made this clear in statements carried in the Observer.
Behind this strategy lies the frustration of a public-sector organisation that wants to be a private-sector company. While still in the public sector, it wants to use its still commanding market position to beat its private-sector competitors, but, under the current regulatory regime, is hampered from doing so. So, either way, it puts its workers, and their terms and conditions (pay, hours and pensions), under the cosh.
In the background are two other important players - Postcomm, the postal regulator, and the government. Postcomm, staffed by neo-liberals and encouraged by the government, has deregulated the postal market far in advance of that which is required under European Union directives.
The New Labour government could have prevented or stopped this dispute at any time it wished - it is not only the paymaster but the single shareholder in the company. But it does not want to intervene in the dispute to resolve it, for that would mean tipping the scales in favour of the CWU - something it and Royal Mail do not want.
The CWU's task is to increase is leverage on the government to intervene to end the dispute on terms favourable to it. This can be done through making the issue a political "hot potato", by using industrial and political campaigning pressure.
But the CWU also needs to create leverage over the government to change Royal Mail senior management, reimpose the public-service ethos on the company and end the current regulatory regime.
No small task. Yet, until it does that - more likely in alliance with other public-sector unions - the CWU will find that any short-term victories it may achieve are undermined by the marketisation of Royal Mail. In other words, even if it wins this year, it will still face the same battle next year and the year after that.
Some good comments after as well.
