Postal workers - let's keep an eye on our leaders!
WORKERS POWER | 21.08.2007 15:01 | Workers' Movements | Oxford
Scared by a wave of unofficial walkouts at the beginning of August that raised the spectre of an all out post strike, Royal Mail bosses have finally agreed to negotiations with the Communication Workers Union. Reportedly £23 million has been found to help fund pay rises. But the rank and file militants, who led the decisive wildcat strike in Scotland that forced Royal Mail into talks, may still be denied victory. A CWU rep explains the dangers - and the opportunities - in the current stage of the dispute.
Postal workers - let's keep an eye on our leaders!
Strikes force Royal Mail to negotiate
Scared by a wave of unofficial walkouts at the beginning of August that raised the spectre of an all out post strike, Royal Mail bosses have finally agreed to negotiations with the Communication Workers Union. Reportedly £23 million has been found to help fund pay rises. But the rank and file militants, who led the decisive wildcat strike in Scotland that forced Royal Mail into talks, may still be denied victory. A CWU rep explains the dangers - and the opportunities - in the current stage of the dispute.
On Thursday 9 August, just hours before a third week of rolling strikes in the post were to go ahead at airports and mail centres, the leadership of the Communications Workers Union suspended industrial action. CWU leaders Dave Ward and Billy Hayes, in charge of the negotiating team for the union, announced that talks would begin at the TUC and that "Royal Mail and the union are committed to reaching an agreement by 4 September".
The talks will be secret - CWU members will not know what is being discussed about their future. And in order to keep Royal Mail happy, a postal workers' demonstration in London, planned for 21 August, has been postponed, even though this will take more pressure off Royal Mail in the negotiations. As a letter from Billy Hayes put it to members, "We are keen to give the negotiations the best possible chance of success."
Rank and file posties force Royal Mail to retreat
In public Royal Mail spin doctors have kept repeating their mantra over the weeks of strike action: "The offer is the offer; there is no more money available" - despite finding £40 million for management bonuses. They said they were willing to let the strikes drag on to December if necessary, predicting that CWU members would drift back to work without a quick victory. Now they have been forced to eat their words.
As the union leadership rightly points out, Royal Mail buckled due to the pressure of the strike. The national strikes have seen an extremely high turnout - over 98% in the mail centres. The rolling strikes that began on 25 July have seen a steadily increasing mountain of mail build up - up to 200 million items.
But what really torpedoed Royal Mail's strategy was the magnificent walkout against management attempts at victimisation in Glasgow. Six thousand postal workers took unofficial action as the "wildcat" strike spread across Scotland and down to Newcastle, Liverpool and Chester.
This showed Royal Mail that there was a deep reservoir of support for strike action and a willingness by large numbers of postal workers to fight it out to the end. It showed that militant sections, while a minority, can bring out the majority on a scale that would cripple Royal Mail quickly.
Most important, it showed that Royal Mail couldn't rely on the union leaders to keep a lid on things and that the rank and file were not afraid to take unlawful action - something that could become more explosive, as the strike bites and Royal Mail has to turn to victimisation and bullying in order to try and break it at the local level. Glasgow showed them what they would get if they tried.
So Royal Mail has changed its tactic and held out the olive branch of negotiations, as a way of halting the momentum of the strike. With strikes suspended, their hand will be much stronger in the negotiating room - with the heat off them, they can clear the strike mail, and they know it is harder to restart a strike than to keep it going. They have insisted on a deal by 4 September, when mail traffic rises sharply after the quiet summer months, and they would be hammered by any strike action.
Unfortunately, Ward, Hayes and the rest of the negotiating team have taken the bait and agreed to these conditions. Worse they have agreed to hold the talks in secrecy. While the bosses always prefer not to let the workers know what they're planning, it is in all CWU members' interests to know what they are saying, so that they can give their negotiating team instant feedback and a mandate to respond.
Don't suspend strikes for talks
Suspending strikes for talks is certainly a mistake. We would squeeze the best deal out of Royal Mail in negotiations by keeping the pressure up, and maintaining the strike. Rather than cancelling the London march we should be calling demonstrations in every city to keep the momentum going during the talks.
However, there is good reason to believe that this is a deliberate attempt by the CWU leadership to keep the strike within certain bounds, in order to create a space for negotiations. There is a real risk that Dave Ward and Billy Hayes want to do a deal as soon as possible, even at the expense of postal workers' fundamental interests.
They have already said that they want a little more on pay, at least a rise that keeps up with inflation, and a return to the Efficiency Agreement of 2006. This agreement banned strikes against "savings", i.e. the destruction of full-time jobs. Since it was signed last year, many of the weaker offices have lost jobs, while others had to fight alone - as in Manvers and Stoke. Why should we go back to the level of localised resistance and accept Royal Mail's right to cut jobs after we've started to put the frighteners on them by taking national action?
Also, there are hints that Royal Mail will push for our final salary pension and early shift allowance to be cut for new starters. This would create a two-tier workforce, and a mass of casualised part-timers that are worse off than the rest. It would allow Royal Mail to divide and weaken the CWU.
No doubt Dave Ward will say that Royal Mail wouldn't have agreed to talks at all without those conditions. Fine, then we escalate the strike action, and add millions of items every week to the strike pile. They can't fit it all in mail centres!
At the least, the CWU leadership should immediately call strike action starting 4 September to put the maximum pressure on for the final weeks of negotiations. Billy Hayes and Dave Ward should warn Royal Mail bosses Allan Leighton and Adam Crozier that this will be an escalating strike, starting at a higher level than before, say two days a week, and growing rapidly into an all-out indefinite strike, as they saw in Scotland, only UK-wide and official. The only way to avoid it should be their signatures on a deal democratically agreed by the striking members. That'll sharpen their minds!
Watch our leaders!
It is worrying that the leadership has made the negotiations secret. It allows them to hide the details from members. This is undemocratic. CWU members voted for these people and deserve their trust. Ward and Hayes want the freedom to discuss all sorts of combinations of cuts and changes that most of us would be against, without members having the right to know what is being discussed and therefore to put pressure on them.
And there's a precedent for this.
In May 2006, the CWU conference voted unanimously to reject a 2.5% pay offer and demand £400 a week basic, the average wage of a British manual worker. Delegates were advised to go back and prepare for strikes. But the call to action never came. Royal Mail slightly raised their offer - to 3.5%, still less than inflation and therefore a real pay cut - and they linked it to job cuts. After dragging out the campaign and ballot for three months without any strike action, the union leadership managed to get a majority for the offer on a low turnout of 47% - i.e. most didn't even bother to vote.
In the last quarter of 2006-07 the efficiency scheme added just 33p to consolidated pay. That, in exchange for jobs, is a rip-off by any measure! Meanwhile, the union leadership ignored - and continues to ignore - attacks, such as Royal Mail's national ban on full-time recruitment, which means full-time vacancies are filled with part-timers, because to fight them would threaten the efficiency deal.
The danger is that these talks result in a similar "compromise" that accepts a little more money in exchange for more job cuts, the replacement of full-time jobs with part-timers (the Dutch model), and new (worse) conditions and pensions for new recruits. This would create a two-tier work force, weakening the union. What's more, it will not last. Royal Mail will stick to promises not to engage in executive action just long enough to make sure the strike is dead, before they start pushing forward the cuts and sackings once again, just like last year.
This would be a compromise posties couldn't accept - we would be the only ones being compromised! Royal Mail would get what they want: a platform to lower wages, cut pay, conditions and pensions, and pave the way for privatisation - over the broken back of the CWU.
Rank and file militants can take the initiative
So why is there a real danger of a sell-out? Dave Ward and Billy Hayes seem competent and friendly to the membership. Why would they negotiate a deal that would harm their members in the medium and long term?
The CWU leadership, like that of all the other TUC unions, has separated itself out from the rank and file members. The leading officers earn four or five times the wage of an ordinary postal worker. They are committed to finding a solution within the framework of what is acceptable to Royal Mail and the Labour government. They even want to keep spending hard-earned union subs on funding the Labour Party - the very party that is backing Leighton and Crozier and kicking us in the teeth. They oppose efforts to set up a new workers party, based on the trade unions, and demand we support the Labour Party because it is "the only game in town". Taken together, the trade union leaders form what Marxists call a labour bureaucracy, which thinks and acts as a privileged caste with different interests from the millions of working class members of the unions.
When the bosses go on the offensive, this bureaucracy will tend to give in to the employers' demands and try to get the workforce to accept a deal. The alternative, to mobilise the full strength of the union and the broader working class, would threaten an all-out confrontation with the employers and the government, in the process threatening their position as middlemen between the workers and the employers.
That's why Workers Power always argues for workers to watch our union leaders and to take control of our strikes and negotiations. Every real strike throws up new leaders from the ranks, and re-establishes the authority of those that have stood steadfast and fought determinedly in previous battles.
The militant branches in Scotland, which launched the wildcats that have forced Royal Mail to retreat, and others, like those in south London that have voted for four days of strike action on 24-25 and 28-29 August, should call a rank and file conference. Instead of a return to the Efficiency Agreement strategy of the CWU tops, it could debate what the goals of the strike should be, what action is needed to win them, and how to win the majority of workers to this strategy.
This should include a serious debate about:
• Relaunching the strikes, should there be no acceptable offer made by 4 September, and winning the majority of members to an effective escalation of the action, up to an all-out indefinite strike to smash Royal Mail's offensive
• Building local action committees in solidarity with the postal strike and aiming to unite the public sector unions in joint strike action against the government's 2% pay freeze
• Establishing strike committees, based on delegates directly representing the offices, that can mobilise members and network to spread action, like in Glasgow, and link up nationally to provide a democratic and effective leadership for the dispute
• Stopping the union from funding Labour, and taking steps to found a new workers party.
Most important of all, the conference should discuss how we can force our leaders to lead such a fight - and how we can organise to launch necessary action ourselves, if our leaders fail to do it.
We must assume that Royal Mail is using this breathing space to strengthen its ability to withstand further action. We should also sharpen our tools, regroup and prepare for a new offensive. The CWU has won Round One on points. Now we must deliver the knockout punch!
Strikes force Royal Mail to negotiate
Scared by a wave of unofficial walkouts at the beginning of August that raised the spectre of an all out post strike, Royal Mail bosses have finally agreed to negotiations with the Communication Workers Union. Reportedly £23 million has been found to help fund pay rises. But the rank and file militants, who led the decisive wildcat strike in Scotland that forced Royal Mail into talks, may still be denied victory. A CWU rep explains the dangers - and the opportunities - in the current stage of the dispute.
On Thursday 9 August, just hours before a third week of rolling strikes in the post were to go ahead at airports and mail centres, the leadership of the Communications Workers Union suspended industrial action. CWU leaders Dave Ward and Billy Hayes, in charge of the negotiating team for the union, announced that talks would begin at the TUC and that "Royal Mail and the union are committed to reaching an agreement by 4 September".
The talks will be secret - CWU members will not know what is being discussed about their future. And in order to keep Royal Mail happy, a postal workers' demonstration in London, planned for 21 August, has been postponed, even though this will take more pressure off Royal Mail in the negotiations. As a letter from Billy Hayes put it to members, "We are keen to give the negotiations the best possible chance of success."
Rank and file posties force Royal Mail to retreat
In public Royal Mail spin doctors have kept repeating their mantra over the weeks of strike action: "The offer is the offer; there is no more money available" - despite finding £40 million for management bonuses. They said they were willing to let the strikes drag on to December if necessary, predicting that CWU members would drift back to work without a quick victory. Now they have been forced to eat their words.
As the union leadership rightly points out, Royal Mail buckled due to the pressure of the strike. The national strikes have seen an extremely high turnout - over 98% in the mail centres. The rolling strikes that began on 25 July have seen a steadily increasing mountain of mail build up - up to 200 million items.
But what really torpedoed Royal Mail's strategy was the magnificent walkout against management attempts at victimisation in Glasgow. Six thousand postal workers took unofficial action as the "wildcat" strike spread across Scotland and down to Newcastle, Liverpool and Chester.
This showed Royal Mail that there was a deep reservoir of support for strike action and a willingness by large numbers of postal workers to fight it out to the end. It showed that militant sections, while a minority, can bring out the majority on a scale that would cripple Royal Mail quickly.
Most important, it showed that Royal Mail couldn't rely on the union leaders to keep a lid on things and that the rank and file were not afraid to take unlawful action - something that could become more explosive, as the strike bites and Royal Mail has to turn to victimisation and bullying in order to try and break it at the local level. Glasgow showed them what they would get if they tried.
So Royal Mail has changed its tactic and held out the olive branch of negotiations, as a way of halting the momentum of the strike. With strikes suspended, their hand will be much stronger in the negotiating room - with the heat off them, they can clear the strike mail, and they know it is harder to restart a strike than to keep it going. They have insisted on a deal by 4 September, when mail traffic rises sharply after the quiet summer months, and they would be hammered by any strike action.
Unfortunately, Ward, Hayes and the rest of the negotiating team have taken the bait and agreed to these conditions. Worse they have agreed to hold the talks in secrecy. While the bosses always prefer not to let the workers know what they're planning, it is in all CWU members' interests to know what they are saying, so that they can give their negotiating team instant feedback and a mandate to respond.
Don't suspend strikes for talks
Suspending strikes for talks is certainly a mistake. We would squeeze the best deal out of Royal Mail in negotiations by keeping the pressure up, and maintaining the strike. Rather than cancelling the London march we should be calling demonstrations in every city to keep the momentum going during the talks.
However, there is good reason to believe that this is a deliberate attempt by the CWU leadership to keep the strike within certain bounds, in order to create a space for negotiations. There is a real risk that Dave Ward and Billy Hayes want to do a deal as soon as possible, even at the expense of postal workers' fundamental interests.
They have already said that they want a little more on pay, at least a rise that keeps up with inflation, and a return to the Efficiency Agreement of 2006. This agreement banned strikes against "savings", i.e. the destruction of full-time jobs. Since it was signed last year, many of the weaker offices have lost jobs, while others had to fight alone - as in Manvers and Stoke. Why should we go back to the level of localised resistance and accept Royal Mail's right to cut jobs after we've started to put the frighteners on them by taking national action?
Also, there are hints that Royal Mail will push for our final salary pension and early shift allowance to be cut for new starters. This would create a two-tier workforce, and a mass of casualised part-timers that are worse off than the rest. It would allow Royal Mail to divide and weaken the CWU.
No doubt Dave Ward will say that Royal Mail wouldn't have agreed to talks at all without those conditions. Fine, then we escalate the strike action, and add millions of items every week to the strike pile. They can't fit it all in mail centres!
At the least, the CWU leadership should immediately call strike action starting 4 September to put the maximum pressure on for the final weeks of negotiations. Billy Hayes and Dave Ward should warn Royal Mail bosses Allan Leighton and Adam Crozier that this will be an escalating strike, starting at a higher level than before, say two days a week, and growing rapidly into an all-out indefinite strike, as they saw in Scotland, only UK-wide and official. The only way to avoid it should be their signatures on a deal democratically agreed by the striking members. That'll sharpen their minds!
Watch our leaders!
It is worrying that the leadership has made the negotiations secret. It allows them to hide the details from members. This is undemocratic. CWU members voted for these people and deserve their trust. Ward and Hayes want the freedom to discuss all sorts of combinations of cuts and changes that most of us would be against, without members having the right to know what is being discussed and therefore to put pressure on them.
And there's a precedent for this.
In May 2006, the CWU conference voted unanimously to reject a 2.5% pay offer and demand £400 a week basic, the average wage of a British manual worker. Delegates were advised to go back and prepare for strikes. But the call to action never came. Royal Mail slightly raised their offer - to 3.5%, still less than inflation and therefore a real pay cut - and they linked it to job cuts. After dragging out the campaign and ballot for three months without any strike action, the union leadership managed to get a majority for the offer on a low turnout of 47% - i.e. most didn't even bother to vote.
In the last quarter of 2006-07 the efficiency scheme added just 33p to consolidated pay. That, in exchange for jobs, is a rip-off by any measure! Meanwhile, the union leadership ignored - and continues to ignore - attacks, such as Royal Mail's national ban on full-time recruitment, which means full-time vacancies are filled with part-timers, because to fight them would threaten the efficiency deal.
The danger is that these talks result in a similar "compromise" that accepts a little more money in exchange for more job cuts, the replacement of full-time jobs with part-timers (the Dutch model), and new (worse) conditions and pensions for new recruits. This would create a two-tier work force, weakening the union. What's more, it will not last. Royal Mail will stick to promises not to engage in executive action just long enough to make sure the strike is dead, before they start pushing forward the cuts and sackings once again, just like last year.
This would be a compromise posties couldn't accept - we would be the only ones being compromised! Royal Mail would get what they want: a platform to lower wages, cut pay, conditions and pensions, and pave the way for privatisation - over the broken back of the CWU.
Rank and file militants can take the initiative
So why is there a real danger of a sell-out? Dave Ward and Billy Hayes seem competent and friendly to the membership. Why would they negotiate a deal that would harm their members in the medium and long term?
The CWU leadership, like that of all the other TUC unions, has separated itself out from the rank and file members. The leading officers earn four or five times the wage of an ordinary postal worker. They are committed to finding a solution within the framework of what is acceptable to Royal Mail and the Labour government. They even want to keep spending hard-earned union subs on funding the Labour Party - the very party that is backing Leighton and Crozier and kicking us in the teeth. They oppose efforts to set up a new workers party, based on the trade unions, and demand we support the Labour Party because it is "the only game in town". Taken together, the trade union leaders form what Marxists call a labour bureaucracy, which thinks and acts as a privileged caste with different interests from the millions of working class members of the unions.
When the bosses go on the offensive, this bureaucracy will tend to give in to the employers' demands and try to get the workforce to accept a deal. The alternative, to mobilise the full strength of the union and the broader working class, would threaten an all-out confrontation with the employers and the government, in the process threatening their position as middlemen between the workers and the employers.
That's why Workers Power always argues for workers to watch our union leaders and to take control of our strikes and negotiations. Every real strike throws up new leaders from the ranks, and re-establishes the authority of those that have stood steadfast and fought determinedly in previous battles.
The militant branches in Scotland, which launched the wildcats that have forced Royal Mail to retreat, and others, like those in south London that have voted for four days of strike action on 24-25 and 28-29 August, should call a rank and file conference. Instead of a return to the Efficiency Agreement strategy of the CWU tops, it could debate what the goals of the strike should be, what action is needed to win them, and how to win the majority of workers to this strategy.
This should include a serious debate about:
• Relaunching the strikes, should there be no acceptable offer made by 4 September, and winning the majority of members to an effective escalation of the action, up to an all-out indefinite strike to smash Royal Mail's offensive
• Building local action committees in solidarity with the postal strike and aiming to unite the public sector unions in joint strike action against the government's 2% pay freeze
• Establishing strike committees, based on delegates directly representing the offices, that can mobilise members and network to spread action, like in Glasgow, and link up nationally to provide a democratic and effective leadership for the dispute
• Stopping the union from funding Labour, and taking steps to found a new workers party.
Most important of all, the conference should discuss how we can force our leaders to lead such a fight - and how we can organise to launch necessary action ourselves, if our leaders fail to do it.
We must assume that Royal Mail is using this breathing space to strengthen its ability to withstand further action. We should also sharpen our tools, regroup and prepare for a new offensive. The CWU has won Round One on points. Now we must deliver the knockout punch!
WORKERS POWER
Homepage:
http://www.workerspower.com
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