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Oxford union rep sacked in Royal Mail bid to silence opposition to privatisation

21 September

Recent events at the post office centre in Oxford show that Royal Mail, under the guidance of New Labour, is more determined than ever to push through privatisation plans that will severely degrade the postal services that ordinary people rely on.

On 6th August, at a special meeting initiated by the IWCA, Oxford City Council became the only authority in Britain to declare its support for postal workers involved in the current, ongoing national industrial action.

The IWCA called the meeting in order to provide a public platform for the Communication Workers Union (CWU) to challenge the pro-management, anti-union bias of the local media.

It was correctly anticipated that when confronted with the facts of the case, councillors of all parties would struggle to find excuses not to support the CWU’s efforts to defend themselves and the public interest from the government’s discredited privatisation plans. Yet the fact the city council voted in support of the postal workers cause was all but ignored by the Oxford Mail—no great surprise given that the paper ran an editorial the previous day aiming to discredit the meeting.

As with all other public services undergoing privatisation, the dismantling of Royal Mail is having a disproportionate impact on working class people. It is bad enough if you need the service and it’s no longer there, but it’s a double whammy if you also work for it.

40,000 posties are set to lose their jobs across the country if Royal Mail is allowed to push through its business plan, while those lucky enough to keep their jobs stand to receive a below inflation pay award (a pay cut in real terms). The RM pension plan is also at risk, with losses between £50,000 and £100,000 per postal worker, while senior management, on the other hand, retain salaries well into six figures.

Royal Mail is still a public service, so all this is happening under the guiding hand of the New Labour government—a point worth remembering next time its local representatives land on your doorstep looking for votes.

Royal Mail’s bloody-minded determination to steam ahead with its plans to slash the service and bulldoze anybody brave enough to stand in the way became even clearer after the latest events in the Oxford Mail Centre.

Union rep sacked

Steve Gill, a senior union rep, was summoned to the mail centre on Friday 14 September for a disciplinary hearing relating to allegations of gross misconduct on the picket line on the first day of the official post strike back in July.

He had been on suspension since this date, pending an internal disciplinary investigation. At the time of his suspension Steve had no idea what he was supposed to have been accused of (though it eventually transpired that the accusation—to this day unproven—was that he swore at somebody who tried to prevent him picketing a post office, which he was legally entitled to do).

Bob Cullen, the leader of the CWU in Oxford, immediately denounced the decision to suspend Steve Gill as ‘a deliberate provocation to spark a strike.’ Bob explained to the IWCA: ‘Royal Mail have a history of this type of thing. They suspend one of us on trumped-up charges, we strike to defend our colleague and after a merry dance they re-instate the worker because the accusations were false.’

If Steve’s co-workers had not done the decent thing and walked out to defend his job, the workforce would be one union rep down, an ominous precedent would have been set and the story would have barely merited a mention in the local press. But because the union held strong, things took a different turn.

Before the investigation had even started, Steve’s name was leaked to the Oxford Mail, his photo was splashed across the paper’s front page and he was unjustly labelled a ‘violent individual’. The principle of innocent until proven guilty clearly does not apply to workers defending their jobs. Yet the impression given by the media in Oxford is that Steve Gill, rather than his managers, was responsible for the strike and its crippling aftermath!

The wildcat strike ended when the two sides reached an agreement that the investigation would be completed in three weeks, which the union accepted, confident that the allegations are entirely untrue and without foundation.

Five weeks later, on 14 September, while the manager conducting the investigation was on holiday and some witnesses had yet to be heard, Steve was summoned to the Mail Centre to be told by a manager specially sent from Birmingham that he was sacked. His union rep asked to see the letter detailing the grounds for dismissal, but this formal document—required by law—was apparently not available. Smelling a rat, Steve’s rep advised him not to take part in an irregular hearing, and with other co-workers he escorted him off the premises. What is alleged to have followed is worthy of a Victorian novel set in a workhouse.

According to the union, the Birmingham manager followed Steve Gill, trying to serve him with the irregular dismissal notice. In the process he physically, and forcefully, pushed Bob Cullen out of his way. He then followed the CWU reps outside and started shouting at them. Bob (who suffers from a heart condition) was conscious of the fact that if a postal worker were to physically attack a manager he would be arrested on the spot so he went straight to the police to press charges of assault. Bob fell ill at the station and the police were forced to call an ambulance that took him to hospital, were he was kept under observation until the evening.

Back at home 24 hours later Bob commented, ‘It’s bad enough coming into work to be bullied and harassed without expecting to be assaulted by a senior manager as well. But this is not about me, this is about the victimisation of an elected union representative. This is the worst case of victimisation I’ve seen in 40 years as a union rep. Steve has been tried by a kangaroo court so rigged that we could complain to the RSPCA about the treatment of kangaroos. On a more serious note, Steve’s case will be going to a National Appeals Panel, where we have no doubt he will win. We’ll also be taking it to a tribunal on the basis of anti-trade union victimisation.

The Communication Workers Union nationally are so confident in Steve’s innocence that they’ve agreed to employ him at CWU headquarters until his appeal is won. They have also agreed to hire a barrister to look at taking legal action against senior Royal Mail figures for blatant defamation of character in response to claims that CCTV footage showed Steve attacking a member of the public. Royal Mail has now admitted that no such footage exists.’

Allegations of bullying at the mail centre have been rife for years. In 2004 workers insisted the place was an unsafe environment because of ongoing bullying which managers were failing to tackle—a failure that led to a month-long strike resulting in the alleged bullies being removed from the mail centre. If the latest events are proven, they will explain why one postie recently commented ‘they treat us like vermin’, and why workers in the mail centre felt the need to fight back.

Commenting on the dismissal of Steve Gill, Dona Velluti, President of the Oxford & District Trades Union Council, commented, ‘This is intolerable. Royal Mail must not be allowed to flout employment legislation as they are doing with Steve. Somebody must explain to them the concept of dignity in the workplace. Given that Royal Mail is a public service, perhaps Oxford East MP Andrew Smith could volunteer to do that.

‘Personally, I think he should have intervened during the strike in 2004, when he was Secretary for Work and Pensions and workers in his constituency were claiming they were being treated with utter contempt. Well done to the CWU for standing together again and refusing to put up with it, but it must be a dreadful place to work in.’

Unfortunately, Andrew Smith, who has given unquestioned support to every anti-working class measure his government has taken , is unlikely to have either the courage or the inclination to speak out against the root cause of the ongoing unrest at Royal Mail—his government’s plans to deliver the postal service into the hands of private profit-making corporations.