VOICES FROM THE FLOOR LATEST

[flyingfish]

VOICES FROM THE FLOOR
MAIL CENTRE CLOSURES AND MERGERS - WHAT ARE THE MAIN CONCERNS OF POSTAL WORKERS?
Can we keep our Mail Centre open?
If we can't and it closes can alternative jobs be secured locally?
If some jobs can be retained in local replacement units will they be offered to both processing and distribution according to seniority?
Will alternative jobs be offered in deliveries?
How many jobs will be available at new Mail Centres?
Will the number of jobs be restricted in order to maximise some people's over-time?
Will there be voluntary redundancies and how much will we be paid?
What happens if you don't have a car and want a transfer?
What about Royal Mail providing transport?
With Royal Mail placing everything under “review” to cut costs, protecting the terms of transfers is a crucial issue. Protecting travelling allowance, RRIS money, shift allowances, and TPM is essential to our standard of living. Pay protection for loss of S/As is another issue. Securing the best possible voluntary redundancy terms is vital too. Our general terms and conditions need protecting in any new workplaces especially from the pressures of management demands for more “flexibility”.
On CWU Negotiations and Ballot
Securing our Union's right to negotiate on our behalf is very important. Equally important is insisting that no one compromises our terms and conditions.
A ballot for industrial action is a necessary weapon, equally important is the way in which it is used. The focus must be on maximising the unity of postal workers alongside getting community support. To this end the use of over-time bans both general and selective may prove extremely important tactics and lay the ground for successful strikes if they are needed to win victory.
What About the Bigger Picture?
Royal Mail is relentlessly cutting costs under the slogan of “Modernisation”.The postal service is being changed from a public service into a vehicle to maximise profits. Postal workers are paying the price as they see workloads increase and staff levels drop often with no cover provided for workers off sick or on holiday. Flexible working is being used to erode terms and conditions. The Pegasus project in Deliveries has seen workers pushed to breaking point with no concern for their well-being or the service to the public. Backlogs of undelivered mail have built up hitting small businesses hard with late delivery of cheques. New jobs are mainly either temporary, part-time, or agency with little or no company pension or sick pay. The Final Salary Pension has been closed for all workers. Newspaper reports suggest up to 40,000 Mail Centre jobs are at risk.
What are we to make of the statement that “ Royal Mail's modernisations plans must provide customers with a better service and postal workers with improved job security, terms and conditions-not just address the commercial needs of the business*” ?
Our own experience of job losses and of worsening conditions due to competition driven “Modernisation” has already shown such a claim to be wrong. (* Billy Hayes and Dave Ward, CWU letter, 'Government Review of Competition', 31.10.08)
Can Competition Ever Be Fair to Workers and the Public?
Clearly the current set up is unfair competition. The Postal Services Act and Postcomm guarantees private mail companies 20% of the bulk mail market for starters. Royal Mail is also legally bound to maintain the universal service and to process, distribute, and deliver the private mail companies mail cheaply. The private Mail companies have no such obligations.
Reforming competition to reduce these anomalies is appealing but does not address the underling problem caused by accepting the principle of competition in the first place. Competition in the public sector is about transforming state entities with the aim of maximising profits. It also opens up the entire state sector to the private corporations and banks for them to make maximum profits out of.
Maximising profits in both the state sector and the private sector is only achieved by exploiting the labour power of the workers. Workers' jobs, benefits, pay and conditions are attacked by both public and private sector employers in the name of “beating the competition”. Automation and new technology are deployed not to ease the work day but to increase the exploitation of those workers who are left.
It is also highly unlikely that a fairer form of competition would ever exist under New Labour, Liberal Democrats, or Tories, because they are all champions of the so-called “free-market” and the interests of the private corporations and banks. Campaigning for competition “with a level playing field”, as advocated by some, will still see postal workers exploitation increase as more sacrifices are demanded by management to maximise profits. The service to the public will continue to decline.

What is Needed to Bring Real Change?
There is no getting away from the facts however unpleasant they may seem. It is futile to pin our hopes on reforming competition. Only a genuinely publically owned and controlled postal service will look after the workers and society. The Postal Services Act needs to be re-pealed not reformed and the state monopoly re-instated. The network of Post Offices must be protected by state subsidy.The paying of benefit payments into the banks instead of Post Offices should be reversed. Payment of benefits should be returned to Post Offices.Those that say the political climate is not right to raise these demands don't want to rock the boat with postal bosses or the New Labour Government which they support. If the banks don't have to be competitive and can be bailed out then why should competition be forced onto public services?