A history of the 2003 UK postal workers' wildcat strike

[TrueBlueTerrier]

https://libcom.org/history/2003-postal- ... cat-strike

A short history of the largely successful wildcat stoppage of thousands of postal workers in the UK, and the developments which led to the strike.

Background
There had been restructuring of the national postal service - Royal Mail - in the previous few years with permanent to-ing and fro-ing between negotiations and agreements, between unions and management on a national level and conflicts and adjustment problems in the actual daily postal work. Amongst other issues in the centre of these conflicts are various "rationalisation" measures:

- The daily deliveries will be cut from two, to once a day, cutting the workforce by about 30,000
- The closure of 3,000 to 9,000 post offices
- The workers should be able to cover various jobs, or "demarcation", e.g. the drivers should deliver letters, if there is not enough driving work.
- Workers should stay longer or leave earlier according to the amount of work coming in.
- The union should be focused on co-operation and the shop stewards and other reps would have less paid time off for union work.

At the same time the management are trying to undermine local autonomy with new technologies. The commissioned new modern European sorting office near Heathrow, that was due to open in January 2002, faced long delays in being ready. In May 2003 it became known that the costs had already risen from the planned £180 million to £380 million. This new sorting office would replace nine other sorting offices, which have all been problematic centres of workers power.

In August 2003 the CWU (Communication Workers Union) called for a national strike for higher wages. A month of internal repression from the management and a media campaign against "post chaos" meant that by September, the vote was 48,038 against the strike and only 46,391 for it. But we can see that this vote against a national strike, which was only ever going to be a nicely timed union token, is not necessarily a sign of the desperation of the postal workers. As it turns out they would rather trust their own unmediated strength and organisation.

Shortly after the "lost" vote there were a few wildcat strikes in Oxford and official strikes for "London Weighting" (extra pay to make up for the high cost of living) in London. In this situation the management thought it was in a strong position due to the vote against a national strike and therefore the isolation of the workers and it tried to worsen the conditions at the local level. The post offices in London play a doubly important role here: firstly because such a large part of the national post goes through London and secondly because the largest concentration of recalcitrant workers. After the official strikes in London the management in the various offices pushed through the so-called "back to work" agreements. New contracts that for example included overtime plans to clear the backlog of work, but also broadened out the tasks of individual workers. It was clearly a provocation.

Strike
The wildcat strike began at the end of October 2003 in, at the same time and independently, at Greenford mail centre, which was a knock on from a dispute at the nearby delivery office at Southall and at an office in Dartford, London, after a driver refused to deliver the letters that were building up due to the official strike, to another office with other workers. He was sacked for this and his 400 colleagues reacted immediately with a spontaneous work stoppage. The management ensured the spread of the strike by attempting to take the post to other offices. The management knew it was a provocation, but reckoned without such decisive action.

Within eleven days 20,000 to 25,000 workers were out, mostly from London and the South East. More than 16 million letters per day were piling up and after a few days 10,000 post boxes across London were sealed off. A few companies were complaining such as a camera film developers whose factories were not receiving the films to process, and the supermarket Tesco threatened to give their business to a private firm. But this was a part of the propaganda war as it was only one minor contract to deliver books and it turned out not to be a definite cancellation anyway.

There were emergency meetings between the post service management, the government, union officials and employer bodies. The management were publicly trying to reduce the issues to London Weighting in order to isolate them from the rest of the country. On the 29 October the CWU head office sent a standard legal disclaimer as an open letter "How to solve the problem of unofficial strikes", in which they officially distance themselves from the strikes and stated that management are holding them responsible none the less. They called for immediate return to work without repressions.

"It was read out by the head manager at our strike meeting to try and put us off - when the union guy came he downplayed it as what 'they have to say and say every unofficial strike'."

The management did not respond, but instead sent employees, mostly managers who can also do some work, from other parts of the country in as strike breakers into the conflict zone. They were delivering special items if necessary - which they tried to maintain during the strike - the lucrative 'special' priority services, but by the end they had abandoned it.

On 1 November the Guardian published the internal memo sent by the central office to the local post managers instructing them how to deal with the strikers. Basically to use every kind of spying technique going from the use of video cameras to cutting in on strike meetings in order to take the "right steps" against the strikers. Workers told us that managers in post workers uniforms were driving around London in post vans in order to give the impression that the strike was not going so well.

This action was supported by the media, which went on about the "return to work". On the 3rd November, straight after the management climbed down and confirmed that there would be no repression, sackings or local deals would not take place, the strike ended. One day later the fire fighters in various parts of the country walked out on a wildcat strike, because the pay rise they fought for in the last strike has still not been paid...

On the ending of the strike, one worker made the following evaluation:
"After the negotiations the CWU and the management called for a return to work as they had a settlement. Because the next morning we still didn't know anything about the content of this agreement, we carried on striking. One day later it became clear that there would be no repression of the strikers and no local 'back to work contracts', which were not voted on. The main feeling was 'we won'. The basis for the strikes was an attempt to undermine the union and push through changes that had not been voted on. Now it is clear that they 'have to talk to us'.

If the management would have managed to break the strike things would be worse now. It was a defensive, but successful strike. The issue is we broke the anti strike legislation. In this case even the headquarters union official were not trying very hard to enforce the law and the local union reps were actively working against the law. We broke through the unions officials 'anti-strike' politics again, and we were successful when we did."

This article edited by libcom from a longer piece, Wildcats return with a roar, which contains further information.https://libcom.org/library/wildcats-ret ... trike-2003

[Chelseablue]

Oh the good old days , when we were publicly owned and still should be

[k979aaa]

The good old days when we all stuck together but it was even better before.

[NWpostie]

I remember joining up and not long after was involved in the 1988 DRAS dispute, it caused shock waves as we hadn't had a strike for 17 years. I well remember the 2003 strike very well, the feeling at the time was the management thought that since we voted against the strike they can do what they like and nobody was going to fight it, how wrong were they, they had a big bloody nose over it, I don't know why people voted against a strike, I do remember some people being uncertain about voting FOR a strike,because the consequences etc but this unfortunately played into their hands and put the Union in a weak position to negotiate, lessons were learned if you want to negotiate from a position of strength you MUST vote YES, then an strike could have been averted due to the negotiating strength of union Union.

This lesson was learned in 2007 and 2009 the vast majority voted YES to a strike.

[Martin Walsh]

After the dras strike which in my area lasted 3 weeks in 1988 , the next national dispute was the employee agenda dispute in 1996 which lasted 8 one days strikes.

in 2003 after the national vote we in London got a massive yes vote for London Weighting and took the first day strike with very little problems , the second one day strike we had ended with Southall , Greenford , Dartford and West London out on unofficial action.

It was clear that we had to go out unofficially and at a meeting held in the Iron and Steel building in Grays Inn Road all London Branchs in the London Weighting areas agreed to go and get the members out which they did.

Due to Royal Mail putting in unacceptable return to work agreements removing all local agreements offices were out for over a week. As they moved the work around the UK other other offices went out as well including Southend , Coventry , Warrington and others. It became the biggest unofficial dispute since the miners. Most of the capital had been out for two weeks and Greenford and Dartford and West London for almost 3 weeks.

Talks were taking place in an hotel in the Barbican and there was big union meeting in Scotland that sunday which signalled to Royal Mail they were going to join in.

Early in the monday morning as talks went through the night there was a settlement and that led to the union not only getting people back to work but got the agreement on the single daily delivery which meant a £26.28 rise as well as the 5 day week being introduced for all postal workers. Oh we got a very good London Weighting rise as well.

Some would say and still do that was the strike which saved the union. As after the National No vote Royal Mail had informed the union the world had changed and they wanted to review all conditions ranging from pay , seniority ,ways of working etc.

Remember what change things was bottle of people who fronted up Royal Mail and won the day. Nice piece of history !

[eggraidonmojo]

Thanks, that was a very interesting article - and something I didn't know about.

Militancy pays!