`WE SIMPLY CANNOT ACCEPT THIS!'
CWU leaders condemn 17,000 redundancies
The CWU postal workers union yesterday warned: `We simply cannot
accept this practically or morally.'

General Secretary, Billy Hayes, was reacting to the Consignia
announcement that between 15,000 to 17,000 workers are to lose their
jobs in addition to the earlier announcement of 15,000 redundancies.

Consignia yesterday announced a £1.1 billion, pre-tax loss for the
year ending March 2002. The Chairman, Allan Leighton, said: `We need
to restructure the company and embark on our three-year renewal
programme to restore profitability.'

He announced that Royal Mail would save £350 million a year by moving
to a single delivery at a consistent time, six days a week. He
said: `These plans, together with other efficiency measures across
the Group, will result in a further 17,000 jobs becoming redundant
over three years.

`Consignia expects to offer employees whose jobs are to disappear a
choice between redeployment elsewhere in the business or a voluntary
redundancy package.' The Consignia statement added that `there could
be other sackings, and warned that they could not guarantee that they
would all be "voluntary redundancies".'

CWU leader Hayes replied to this onslaught by urging Consignia not to
take `knee-jerk reactions that the company would regret later'. He
said the union would work with the employer to improve productivity
where it was reasonable and beneficial to the service.

He added: `Naturally, we want all our members to have a secure
employment in a profitable business. But that involves all sections
of the postal partnership being realistic – and that includes
government.' Hayes insisted that the results are `undeniably bad',
but that lessons must be learned.

`One lesson is that we have to take the business off the political
football pitch. It has suited the government to keep the price of
stamps artificially low for years. Had prices risen in line with
inflation, the business would have an extra £500 million and have
made an operational profit of over £200 million.'
Hayes continued: `The business is also being made to pay for the
project to computerise the post offices (Horizon).

`It never wanted this system, which was forced upon them by the
government. It was suppose to provide links to benefits agencies, but
never worked. This failed government PPP initiative cost the Post
Office a billion pounds. It was a social, not a commercial decision,
but the Post Office ended up paying.'

Hayes emphasised: `Without this and with an economic pricing system,
there would be no crisis in the Post Office at all'. The CWU leader
added: `Delivering mail to every door in the UK is a labour intensive
operation. Indiscriminately shedding staff is not an option if we are
to continue a universal service.

`We will insist that any and every job cut is justified by
management, and that it will not affect the service nor impact
adversely on workmates. There is plenty of scope to extend the postal
and delivery service into new areas, such as delivery of goods over
the internet,' Hayes said.

`This business is expanding. We have a world of opportunity,
retraction at this point would be plain daft.' However, throughout
the industry postal workers are demanding indefinite national strike
action to defend every job and to defeat Consignia and the Blair
government.