08 July 2009 - Steve Lawson - © Hellmail Postal News

Postal workers begin three days of strike action in London today, beginning with delivery workers, distribution and logistics on Thursday, and mail centres on Friday.

The Communication Workers Union, which balloted workers for industrial action, said the strikes were in direct response to changes being made to working practices without prior consultation. Deputy general secretary refuted claims that postal workers were trying to renogotiate agreements that had already been made, blaming management for abandoning the final phase of the 2007 modernisation agreement and introducing more cuts without the introduction of new equipment.

"This is being replicated right across the country and we have ballot requests for industrial action stacking up. We'll be holding a national day of action on Friday 17th July which will combine industrial action and demonstrations. Royal Mail and the government cannot ignore this situation which is growing worse every day. We need to return to the agreement and negotiate change now."

"The problems that Royal Mail face are not going away. The pension deficit in particular needs to be resolved along with the increasingly important outstanding issues of modernisation. The government is allowing the same management that was criticised for failure to continue mis-managing the company."

However, Lord Mandelson yesterday described the CWU's actions over the last year as "a frustrated and never-ending tedious process of endless negotiation from which insufficient change follows, at too slow a pace."

"Until the CWU's attitude to change, changes, there will be not be change in the Royal Mail, That is the bottom line of it I'm afraid. This is a business in a market operating against competition and technological changes which are creating a serious trend against maintaining volumes in their business. They cannot stand still. This is a recipe for simply falling backwards, further and further and further." he said.

A spokesperson for Royal Mail said: "The CWU’s claim to have offered a "moratorium" on industrial action is misleading nonsense. It is nothing more than an attempt, backed by the threat of escalating strike action, to halt the modernisation process which is crucial to the company’s future survival.

"Any moratorium on further change at Royal Mail - at a time when we urgently need to accelerate the pace of change in the face of an annual 10% decline in UK mail volumes - is simply impossible.

"All our customers and stakeholders, including our shareholder, the Government, are encouraging Royal Mail to modernise even more quickly yet the CWU persists in opposing change. The fact is that change must happen now - not after a "moratorium" of several months - when 20% fewer items are being delivered in central London each day compared to two years ago, and efficiency lags behind the rest of the UK, with productivity in some parts of the capital around 35% below the best UK units."

Mark White, French Subeditor for Hellmail Postal News was more umbrageous:

"Lets cut to the chase here. If the switch to operating in the same way as any other commercial postal operator fails to materialise, and lets be clear, this is the reality faced by Royal Mail and what this row is about, Royal Mail will struggle to recover. That in itself has direct consequences for workers far worse than that which they are striking about, not least of which is any certainty for existing pension arrangements which could face being scrapped if this drags on.

"Some 25% of College and University leavers in the UK will not find work this year and I think the public will have real difficulty sympathising when in many cases their own jobs are on the line or have already been lost.

"The danger for the CWU in extending industrial action is that whilst it may get its message across, it could also in the process be seen as being beligerent, particularly when it had already signed an agreement accepting these changes. If the CWU did not understand the implications of, and the scale of the changes needed, it should not have signed the 2007 agreement or at the very least called in advisors that did understand it. Commercially and indeed financially, Royal Mail is now in a very different position from even a year ago. Time is just running out now.

"Whether private or publicly owned, and one could argue that one all day, without a united effort by the whole company to be up and running in the face of all these pressures, and collectively it does has the expertise to do that, Royal Mail will have effectively rotted from the inside out and even the technological and commercial challenges it faces can't be blamed for that.

"The entire universal service in the UK is dependent on them getting on with the job. The public have loaned Royal Mail the money to buy the equipment it needs, and wants Royal Mail to survive, but this is worthless unless the entire company pulls together. So far it has gone in exactly the opposite direction.

"Without that basic understanding, ultimately there will be no winners at all except Royal Mail's competitors who must be rubbing their hands together at even the hint of a strike. They don't even have to do anything except wait. The industry has already changed beyond recognition and dragging this out doesn't help anyone, least of all Royal Mail customers."

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