Postal strike: the other side of the story
Striking postal workers have repeatedly appeared on the front page of the local papers in recent months. Hundreds of column inches have been given over to the industrial action and its effect on the service, yet when it comes to investigating the root cause of the problems there has been a deafening silence. The Leys Independent breaks this silence to tell the other side of the story.
The bigger picture
The underlying cause of the ongoing industrial unrest at Royal Mail—both nationally and locally—is the Government’s plan to privatise the postal service with the resulting loss of an estimated 40,000 jobs, and an increased workload and loss of pension entitlements for those who survive the axe.
Along with the NHS, Royal Mail was once the envy of the world. But New Labour’s dogged adherence to the discredited American-style neo-liberal agenda of privatising public utilities—first set in motion in 1979 by the Thatcher administration—has changed all this. For shareholders, privatisation is a boon that brings in increased profits. For the ordinary Joe and Josephine, however, privatisation all too often means inferior services and higher prices.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that New Labour’s plans for Royal Mail will herald anything but disaster for the general public or the Royal Mail workforce. In short, the end product of what the spin-doctors call ‘modernisation’ will almost certainly be a demoralised, less efficient workforce and a substandard postal service.
The Oxford story
Against this ominous backdrop, a more immediate concern now plagues postal workers in Oxford: Royal Mail’s recent announcement that it intends to close the Mail Centre at Cowley and transfer operations to Swindon.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) branch at the Mail Centre is recognised as the strongest in the country. It therefore stands to reason that if the privatisation plans are to be pushed through with as little backlash as possible then the union at Cowley must not be allowed to interfere. The announcement, prior to national strike action, that Cowley Mail Centre is to close is seen by many as a calculated scare tactic to demoralise the workforce into backing out of supporting the national strike. If the national strike fails then so does Royal Mail as a public service, and 40,000 jobs with it.
Strangely, while the Cowley Mail centre has been selected for closure, managers there have just received their highest bonuses ever for fully meeting targets. It is hard to square this with the media’s image of an inefficient and strike-crippled workplace.
Management at the Mail Centre is already notorious for harassing and bullying staff. It is hard to believe that this can be put down purely to incompetence. A more likely explanation is that Royal Mail is deliberately trying to provoke the workforce, knowing that making working life intolerable would result in persistent industrial action, which in turn, would provide management with the opportunity to portray the Oxford arm of the industry as outdated and therefore ripe for ‘modernisation’.
IWCA councillor Stuart Craft has first-hand experience of the calculated vindictiveness of Royal Mail management. In 1999 workers at the Becket Street sorting office held a successful two-day strike to defend working conditions. In retaliation for being the union representative, Stuart was victimised by management and eventually sacked. An industrial tribunal hearing the case found that Royal Mail was responsible for 20 instances of harassment but despite this Stuart lost on a technicality as he had been in the job less than two years and therefore had no right to claim unfair dismissal.
Violent gang set to work in Mail Centre
But this is relatively minor compared to what other workers at the Cowley Mail Centre have endured: In April 2004 an unofficial strike was called at the Mail Centre in frustration over management’s failure to take action against a gang which had been intimidating fellow workers for several months.
Seven members of this Cowley Road-based gang—whom experienced posties suspect were hired by relatives in management to break the union—had attacked a postman in the staff canteen in front of three managers when he had stepped in to defend a female colleague from being harassed. Yet only the man who had been attacked was suspended—for defending himself. The gang later tried to intimidate the postman by issuing threats to his young son on his way to school. The gang also paid a visit to a union rep’s home and threatened him.
But female workers bore the brunt of the gang’s abuse. They were subjected to a daily barrage of sexual harassment. This led to some women handing in their notice because they could no longer bear to come into work. When one postie complained about the harassment to management she was told, ‘You’re a good-looking woman, you should expect it.’ In the course of the strike, pickets also had to contend with gang members joy-riding around the car park of Cowley sorting office trying to continue their bullying campaign.
The sacking of postman John Doran and CWU rep Steve Gill on September 14 can also be seen as open provocation. That management has singled out and victimised John—a popular and conscientious long-serving postman—shows the arbitrary nature of the vindictiveness now prevalent at Royal Mail. Steve Gill was also suspended on trumped-up charges of ‘violent and aggressive behaviour on the picket line’ (the actual charges amounted to swearing) and had the dubious honour of being crucified by the Oxford Mail, which dedicated a full front page to portraying him as a thug and blaming him for the unofficial strike.
The case against the two workers looks even more suspect when the character of a key Royal Mail witness is held up to the light. This management stooge has two criminal convictions for beating up his (now ex) girlfriend and also recently resigned from Royal Mail to avoid being sacked after being given community service for dangerous driving.
After initially taking the commendable step of walking out over Steve’s suspension, the CWU—adamant that the charges of ‘misconduct’ against the two workers will be rubbished at their forthcoming hearing—called off the strike, deciding not to be pushed into unofficial action that no one, other than management, wants. Workers refusal to take the bait and walk out, even when a manager recently assaulted their union rep, Bob Cullen, also runs contrary to the media portrayal of a workforce ready to strike at the drop of a hat.
IWCA’s proud record of support
IWCA members and supporters on the Leys have a proud and consistent record of opposing bullying and intimidation. This record includes community campaigns against drug dealers and other nightmare neighbours as well as working against harassment and victimisation in the workplace.
To this end we have given material support to postal workers in Cowley by attending CWU picket lines on a number of occasions and also political support by countering the anti-union propaganda of the media through our newsletters and websites and through our work within the council chamber.
An important example of our political support was the special council meeting on 6 August, initiated by the IWCA, at which Oxford City Council became the only authority in Britain to declare its support for postal workers involved in the current, ongoing national strike action.
The IWCA called the meeting in order to provide a public platform for the CWU to challenge the pro-management, anti-union bias of the local media. As anticipated, when confronted with the facts of the case, councillors struggled to find excuses not to support the CWU’s efforts to defend themselves and the public interest against the Government’s discredited privatisation plans.
Labour councillors did try to water the motion down by introducing an amendment based on misleading arguments supplied by Royal Mail management but when these arguments failed to hold water they had no option but to vote in favour and help pass the IWCA’s motion in support of postal workers.
The Oxford Mail, which ran an editorial the previous day aiming to discredit the special meeting, all but ignored the result. This confirms suspicions that any news favourable to the postal workers cause is of no interest to the paper’s backers and clearly underlines the necessity of an independent working class voice to tell the other side of the story.
Of course disruption to the mail service can be annoying, but we need to remember that postal workers are the ones hit hardest by the industrial action, through loss of wages.
It is not easy these days to lose pay but CWU members are suffering hardship to keep Royal Mail from the greedy hands of private profiteers, to save jobs and to preserve a first class service for us all. They deserve our respect and our full support.
Leys Independent, issue 37, October 2007
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