REPLY TO SENTINEL SHITE ABOUT BURSLEM STRIKE

[Andy Bentley]

Reply just sent to the Sentinel shite!

The Sentinel is encouraging readers to write letters in response to their question, "Do you support the strike?" The Sentinel is an anti-union pile of shite but I have just sent the letter below anyway. I wonder if they'll print it!
The more letters people send the more chance we have of getting some coverage. Royal Mail bosses have no support among postal workers so are forced to look to swaying "public opinion" in their favour by using the millionaires newspapers. Therefore, its important to try to get our voice across wherever and whenever we can.

To the Sentinel

"In the last few months Royal Mail management in North and Mid Staffordshire have failed in their attempt to impose part time jobs in place of full time jobs. This attempt to downgrade workers in our area failed because 700 postal workers across 11 depots stood together to defend postal services and took strike action.

Now, in a childish act of revenge Royal Mail bosses have sacked 62 year old postie, Dave Condliffe, after wrongly accusing him of abusive behaviour to a manager. In response, postal workers at Burslem have been forced to take strike action again to defend Dave from this blatant victimisation.
As a result, people in the ST6 postal area will get no deliveries from 8th to 14th March. This could have been easily prevented if the ridiculous charges against Dave Conliffe were dropped and he was allowed to continue doing his job. Dave Condliffe has a thirteen year record of exemplorary service as a postman. He has never even had one day of sick in all that time.

Royal Mail manager, Paul Jones, drafted in from elsewhere has refused to apologise for taking nine weeks to decide to sack Dave. In the last four weeks management made no contact at all with Dave. The evidence of two eye witnesses who stated that it was Dave who was abused by a manager was ignored by Paul Jones with the comment that such evidence from customers does not carry any weight! Ordinary people will be angry to hear that Royal Mail is prepared to ignore their opinions in this way and carry on with their victimisation of a hard working postal worker.

This raises some serious questions about how Royal Mail management operate. At what point during Dave’s nine weeks of suspension did management decide to sack him? Did the management at Royal Mail have a democratic vote to sack Dave Condliffe? If yes, when, by whom and what was the result? If not, who took the decision? Why was Dave’s excellent record not taken into account and why was crucial evidence ignored?

In comparison, postal workers at Burslem in a democratic ballot, have voted by a majority of 90% that they are left with no alternative but to take strike action to defend Dave Condliffe and other postal workers in the future from this type of intimidation.

Many other workers have to put up with management bullying and intimidation which are familiar tools used by bosses to try to isolate and divide workers. Royal Mail postal workers are entirely justified in taking this action and should be supported by all working people."

[johno47]

RM have had it in for Burslem for a long time they see us as militant, not ordinary people who stand together for whats right, i wonder if the people in the ST6 area would be happy with RM if they new that after the saturday and monday strike the week before christmas, when we came back into work on the tuesday, we asked for overtime to clear the backlog of mail, which after previous strikes or mail delays is the norm, but we were refused, we then found out that every other delivery office that had been on strike had been given overtime, except ours, when late on thursday morning RM realised that they had dropt a b***ock and they realised that the vast numbers of managers and casuals would not be able to clear it up they came to us asking us to do overtime, we told them to f**k off, it cost them 3 or 4 times the amount it would have cost them to pay us 30 hours overtime each, and thats a low calculation, thats why on the saturday when we finished there was still a backlog of mail that had not been delivered, thats why we went for a strike ballot early because we new that Dave would only get one outcome from his case.