On Sunday 9 September, a month-long “period of calm” in the postal dispute came to an abrupt end, as Royal Mail managers delivered a surprise ultimatum to the CWU postal union. The list of demands was tantamount to a bosses’ charter to slash the conditions of postal workers and hike up our workload and exploitation, imposing total flexibility in our shift and work patterns and and forcing us to retire five years later at 65.

The CWU bureaucracy’s ongoing strategy of dropping strikes for talks has proven bankrupt – it is now clear, if it was not before, that Royal Mail has no intention of negotiating any serious changes to its business plan. What’s more, suspending the hugely successful postal strike for a month of secret negotiations has meant the union action losing momentum, and allowed Royal Mail to clear the huge backlog of over 2 million items of strike-bound mail and to prepare its next round of attacks.

July and August saw a series of magnificent strikes, with turnouts of over 95% in major cities and units by CWU members and 5000 new workers flooding into the union. Postal workers showed that they have the power to shut down the postal network and smash Royal Mail bosses back. Allan Leighton and Adam Crozier were forced to negotiate only after they attempted to victimise strikers and unleashed illegal walkouts of up to 6000 workers in the process. We cannot accept this battery of demands which would destroy both our jobs and the CWU itself as a strong, fighting union. Instead we need to regruoup in every workplace and branch and prepare for battle.

A declaration of war

To add insult to injury, management’s ultimatum was a clear slap in the face to the union. It pushed to one side a month of negotiations for a list of unacceptable demands, and it bore the signs of long preparation rather than a hasty last minute decision, making it even clearer that the negotiations were a con. Emboldened by the timidity of the CWU negotiators, the Postal Executive Committee (PEC) headed by Deputy General Secretary-Postal Dave Ward, the company declared it would now press on with change, starting by imposing unpopular later start times for workers on October 8th.

It is now clear that, with their “period of calm” that suspended this action, the PEC and Ward have thrown away a winning hand. Yet almost immediately after this final ultimatum, rather than recognise reality and immediately calling strike action, the PEC showed they were up for being suckered some more. A Letter to Branches stated that they would still “respond positively to Royal Mail’s offer of further negotiations” while only agreeing “in principle” to reactivate the strike some time later this month!

Royal Mail declared war back in April with their business plan and now after their fake ceasefire, they are back with even more arrogant demands than before as they restart their offensive. Its time to prepare for class war, not a “period of calm”, and our leadership needs to be pressured to act immediately and set the date for strike action.

[i][b]Where do we go from here?[/b][/i]

The union tops have continued their policy of hiding the negotiations undemocratically from members. After a month of secret negotiations and five days after Royal Mail’s bombshell, they still had not released the damning detail of the ultimatum to members, leaving the full scale of the onslaught to leak out via reps and rank and file websites such as RoyalMailchat. No doubt they do not want to “alarm” the members unduly – i.e. face their wrath and pressure – until after a national briefing of branch officials on Thursday 13 September, a closed meeting packed with local bureaucrats who would be more “responsible” and sympathetic to their timid strategy. After consultations within the bureaucracy and a consensus, they could face the rank and file members united.

From what has leaked out, it is clear that we are facing an all out assault on our jobs. There is no question about it now; this is indeed a life and death struggle for postal workers’ future and that of the union. Royal Mail offered 6.7% over two years (that’s 3.35% a year, below current inflation levels) but only if we swallowed the enormous strings attached. According to documents put online by some branch reps, Royal Mail’s these strings included:

• Later starts including making workers work later on Saturdays
• All night shifts and Sunday collections to go and weekend work cut at Mail Centres
• Summer savings by workers doing more than one walk
• Flexible working, with employees working different hours on different days of the week, with only 7 days notice for changes! You can be told to cover any job you are trained for at any time and not refuse – drivers or duty holders on adjacent walks would cover walks of those who go on sick, for instance.
• Annualised hours where we work less in the summer but more at busy periods such as Christmas
• forced overtime on bulk postings, where cut offs (working to contracted hours) will not be allowed
• increasing Door to Doors (mass weekly junk mailings) to five per week, with no extra payment or possibly with no payments at all
• The MTSF agreement, which makes Royal Mail pay for changes or redundancies, will be dropped from 1 April 2008
• Retirement at 65 after 2010 on a worse pension
• Productivity bonuses based on beating your (impossible) budget and “colleague shares”

The key strategic issues lie in two of the conditions. The “colleague shares” are just a rehash of the old employee share scheme that Allan Leighton, Royal Mail CEO has been arguing for over a year, and which is a stepping stone to privatisation.

More immediately given the cuts and changes we face right now, the proposals amount to a massive blow to union power. Dave Ward, Billy Hayes and the rest of the PEC have based their strategy on renegotiating last year’s Efficiency Agreement. This forces postal offices to make efficiency cuts, with no strikes allowed, in return for yearly pay rises. The pay promises that were the bait went out the window almost immediately, with rises last year and proposed this year both coming in under inflation – in reality they are a pay cut. Despite this Ward, Hayes and the PEC have focussed the current dispute completely on trying to renegotiate the Efficiency Agreement, only with even more concessions built in this time round.

From the rumours and leaks seen so far, this indeed looks like a beefed up Efficiency Agreement plus the unwelcome additions of "flexibility" and pension cuts. What’s more, Royal Mail is proposing changes to the Industrial Relations Framework (IRF) that would streamline the process of negotiating over disagreements between management and the union at workplace level, enshrining “change, flexibility and efficiency” as the norm. As if Royal Mail didn’t have enough power to pressure hard-worked reps and force through cuts in local workplaces already! The current IRF is bad enough; the changes Royal Mail wants would see it turned into a vehicle to drive through dictat after management dictat at the local level. An IRF that is a charter for 'flexibility and efficiency" would whittle away the power of local reps to say "no" to proposed cuts even more than the Efficiency Agreement did.

[i][b]The bureaucracy’s strategy will not lead to victory[/b][/i]

The bureaucracy’s strategy, centred on the Efficiency Agreement, has not worked over the last year in favour of members. Now it has been left in tatters by Royal Mail’s bombshell. We have no choice but to fight, but while Royal Mail has used the month to prepare its plans for a showdown, the CWU bureaucrats shrink from this and seek to return to the previous strategy of rolling strikes that they dropped for negotiations in August. All members should demand to see what our leaders thought they had negotiated with Royal Mail before the ultimatum on 9 September, and see how low they were willing to go in selling away our future.

Strike action would be coupled with the campaign to “do your job properly”, with bumper stickers and appeals for workers to come in on time, take breaks etc. Even this is a timid alternative to calling a work to rule. While such campaigns can be important adjuncts to a strike, they are not enough, and will not go anywhere near defeating Royal Mail. Management is out to break the union and impose a new business plan, they will not stop unless we break their will to impose it through shutting down their industry.

Politically the CWU leaders want to limit themselves to pressuring Gordon Brown to stop backing Royal Mail - rumours are that the first strike date could be as late as Tuesday 25 September, timed to coincide with the Labour Party Conference. When will they realise that the Labour tops are no on the side of the union?

The issue our leaders are ducking becomes clearer with every Royal Mail dictat: we need a massive escalation of action immediately. We should go out for three days like the RMT workers in London last week, the next week out for four days, and up to all-out indefinite strike action by October 8 if Royal Mail persists in its plans. Instead of sitting in Wimbledon waiting on Royal Mail to negotiate, every member of the PEC should be on a national tour of the localities to retail the full horror of Royal Mail’s proposals and win the members to taking the necessary action to defeat them.

Instead their actions work in the opposite direction. Their commitment to Labour and bureaucratic fear of an all-out struggle is proving a millstone around the neck of the union, threatening to act as a drag on members’ morale and horizons. Another danger will appear, that militant sections will stage walk outs over management provocations but remain isolated from the bulk of the members and end without victory, wearing down these key sections of the union.

Brown is the man who just met Thatcher and declared his admiration for her as a “conviction politician”. She was not for turning when it came to smashing down union power, public services and workers rights and standards of living, neither is he. We need to immediately stop funding Labour and seek to unite our strikes with the millions of other public sector workers consulting and balloting over Brown’s 2% public sector pay freeze. The CWU should be leading the way with militant action demanding the other union leaders unite in strike action with us. This will show other workers what is possible and inspire them to come forward and fight alongside us, raising their confidence and horizons, and ours. Such a united strike could turn the tables not just on Leighton and Crozier but their paymaster Gordon Brown, along with his privatisation plans for public services.

[i][b]For a rank and file movement[/b][/i]

The leadership’s strategy will not win us a victory that defends jobs – they seem determined to trade these away with a new Efficiency Agreement even worse than the first one was. Their current strategy cannot defend our fundamental interests, it is debatable if it can win anything substantial. However if we were to lose it would be a disaster for CWU members. We cannot allow that to happen. Only resolute strike action can win, we need to come out and stay out until the management is forced to surrender. Let us not forget the only reason they were forced to the negotiating table before is because of the wildcat action in Scotland and the north west of England. The management got scared of it spreading, and offered negotiations.

CWU members who agree with this strategy and want to fight for it must be organised. We must build a Rank and File Movement in the CWU, and across the trade union movement, that would allow the more militant sections of the unions to act together and speak together, and thus become a factor in the developing debates and action. The branches that have led walkouts and strikes, which are our strongest, can take the lead by calling a conference of all members and branches that want a decisive escalation, that want to defend jobs not just pay, that seek to unite with other workers in united strike action, and that are not afraid of a confrontation with Labour and even break from it if necessary.

This is an urgent task and cannot wait another month. Thousands of CWU members have walked out or gone on strike beyond the national days of action laid down by the PEC, some illegally, and many thousands more are beginning to look for a stronger policy. We urge all militants and activists to turn to this struggle for a rank and file conference in order to have a voice, to have greater influence and then to win control of this strike that we so desperately need to win. The clock is ticking, and our leaders are fiddling while Rome burns. Yet we have shown with our strike that postal workers are a power to be reckoned with. We brought Royal Mail to the table, now we need to bring them to their knees.