Article
Rogue Mail
The postal dispute was bound to get bloody: egged on by the regulator Postcomm, Royal Mail executives are bent on marketising a public service.
It is worth remembering the Royal Mail dispute started back in early June this year. Several one-day and rolling strikes have already occurred, followed by nearly five weeks of talks, which failed to produce sufficient advance to prevent the present, further strike action.
And this is despite the Communication Workers' Union then considerably upping the ante by closing down the network for nearly a week, and despite talks taking place during the strike - quite an unusual phenomenon these days when managers say, "we won't talk unless you come back to work."
What lies behind this protracted dispute?
On the Royal Mail side, the intent is to have what is known as a "reforming confrontation". This means that the company wants to take on, face down and beat the union. In so doing, it wants to inflict such a grave defeat on the union that the union is then unable to resist any future management diktat because the union is so demoralised. Royal Mail made this clear in statements carried in the Observer.
Behind this strategy lies the frustration of a public-sector organisation that wants to be a private-sector company. While still in the public sector, it wants to use its still commanding market position to beat its private-sector competitors, but, under the current regulatory regime, is hampered from doing so. So, either way, it puts its workers, and their terms and conditions (pay, hours and pensions), under the cosh.
In the background are two other important players - Postcomm, the postal regulator, and the government. Postcomm, staffed by neo-liberals and encouraged by the government, has deregulated the postal market far in advance of that which is required under European Union directives.
The New Labour government could have prevented or stopped this dispute at any time it wished - it is not only the paymaster but the single shareholder in the company. But it does not want to intervene in the dispute to resolve it, for that would mean tipping the scales in favour of the CWU - something it and Royal Mail do not want.
The CWU's task is to increase is leverage on the government to intervene to end the dispute on terms favourable to it. This can be done through making the issue a political "hot potato", by using industrial and political campaigning pressure.
But the CWU also needs to create leverage over the government to change Royal Mail senior management, reimpose the public-service ethos on the company and end the current regulatory regime.
No small task. Yet, until it does that - more likely in alliance with other public-sector unions - the CWU will find that any short-term victories it may achieve are undermined by the marketisation of Royal Mail. In other words, even if it wins this year, it will still face the same battle next year and the year after that.
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User Comments
blackrock
10 October 2007 9:05AM
Don't expect my heart to bleed for them, markbraund.
This year alone several items of mail that I sent have been lost - including a present I was sending to my sister for her birthday. Several parcels or items of mail that have been sent to me have also gong missing which has cost me a lot of money. Lastly a postcard for my mother finally turned up 2 years after it had been sent.
And then there are the post offices. One of the few (if not the last) organisations to have a half day on Wednesdays.
The current Royal Mail service is rotten and is stuck in a 1950s timewarp.
iamnotwhattheywant
10 October 2007 9:08AM
And yet Europe started all this but this paper and many of it's writers support Europe. What to do? It must be very difficult to maintain a consistent line. My heart bleeds.
alisdaircameron
10 October 2007 9:17AM
If Crozier and the mad marketisers have their way we can all kiss goodbye to a nationwide delivery system that operates to the doorstep and with a set of flat rates for postage to anywhere in the country. Woe betide you if you live in rural Scotland, Cornwall, any of the many islands from the Isle of Wight to Anglesey to Barra.A 'service' for metropolitan elites and bugger the rest.
Harrybro
10 October 2007 9:49AM
Great article. Neatly summarises what's happening with the postal service, why the CWU is on strike, and why that won't be enough.
LizStockeraswas
10 October 2007 9:56AM
Thank you for a cool analysis.
I am a pensioner married to a postal worker. Anyone who thinks this is a frivolous strike should think again. None of us can afford the loss of pay and the long period of talks (5 weeks) gave many of us hope of a resolution without the need for a strike. But management were intransigent, and have continued to be childishly offensive in comments about their workforce.
I was reading comments from the public over on the BBC blog. I was horrified at the ignorance displayed. Among all the repetitive whinges on the lines of 'Stop it NOW it's affecting ME!' there were many comments blaming the postal workers for the perceived decline in services over the last year or so. For God's sake do the public really believe that this is down to the workers? They are well aware of what management decisions have meant in terms of efficiency .... being on the frontline and wearing a uniform they get told, and blamed. It is a tribute to them that they do not lose their tempers at being blamed for what they never wanted anyway. They can see that Royal Mail's proposals will further reduce the service ..... believe it or not there is still a strong public service ethos among many [postal workers and this is part of the reason for their strike.
The attitude I have read that they should all be sacked and replaced with eager immigrants is the least of the insults being bandied about. And then there is the repeated claim that 'my conditions are worse but I put up with it' actually spoken with pride as if this supine response to managerial bullying has somehow become praiseworthy. I don't know quite what has happened to the concept of solidarity but I do know the postal workers dispute is more important than simple selfishness and deserves some thinking support.
You'll miss them when they're gone......
E10Rifles
10 October 2007 10:00AM
Erm, blackrock, the increase in thefts and losses have mainly come about since the increase in agency and casual staff - something that the CWU has always fought against. And why are you blaming individual posties for the fact that the system lost a postcard for two years?
The Post Offices dispute is not the main one that Gregor Gall is writing about and is much smaller. But of course, if you're happy to see Post Offices disappear altogether which is RM's agenda, by all means attack the staff who work there and see how things pan out in a few years.
boomonkey
10 October 2007 10:14AM
"more likely in alliance with other public-sector unions"
This is the key, Unions must face up to the neo-liberal policies that this government is seeking to impose across all public sectors as one. Teachers, nurses, council workers and the posties all face the same attacks on pay and conditions. Unless a joined up arguement is made against cuts and privitisation arcoss sectors, and joint up action is taken to back this up, all our public services will face death from a thousand cuts.
Gareth100
10 October 2007 10:18AM
Anyone who remembers Alan Leighton's time at Leeds United will realise he couldn't run the proverbial piss-up in a brewery. That said the continuing restrictive practises at Royal mail hark back to a bygone era.
Roncim
10 October 2007 10:48AM
Both sides in this dispute have, naturally, their own points to make and as a bystander, I don't know who to believe. I certainly don't take either side's opinion without wondering what the other side of the debate might be.
However, there are genral points to be made.
Electronic communication has come into play and I, with many others, get much information on bills, bank info etc by email rather than the post. I also use email to contact friends everywhere and have come to resent it when I have to send a letter at high cost and not knowing when, or if, it will get to its destination. Most of the material that comes to me by post goes straight into the bin as it is junk mail.
So whether the postal workers like it or not, their trade is in decline and if they are trying to play King Canute with modernisation or refusing to see that job losses are inevitable, they cannot and should not expect to win their argument.
The parallel question about PO services is down to the Government. I fail to understand why it is no longer possible to pay the TV licence or tax a car at the Post Office. Some people will prefer other methods but for the Government to withdraw the PO as one possibility seems crazy to me.
No doubt there are many points unknown to me but the above alone seems to be worth debate.
Bluejil
10 October 2007 11:10AM
I have read other places the argument that the Royal Mail is not needed, shooting itself in the foot., etc. I don't understand this. Yes, e-mail is available for many bills but it can't cover everything. For instance, my children's school does not use e-mail, they communicate by letter and Royal Mail.
Then I hear the argument about folks going to the P.O., to pick up the mail. What about rural areas? People who do not drive or can't drive? Email can't fix that, other more expensive services can't take the place of Royal Mail. Does it make sense to drive to a P.O., to pick up mail, clogging roads and small parking lots?
The Royal Mail is a needed service and shouldn't be disregarded and as has been pointed out here, the people who deliver the mail do get the short end of mis-management.
rockinred
10 October 2007 11:26AM
The problem here is neither Adam Crozier, nor the union. They're both in impossible positions because of Government stupidity. Blair and his lot were always bedazzled by big business and bought the line that private enterprise inevitably runs things better. Trouble is, they all knew fuck all about business and enjoyed being flattered and feted so were turned over and stitched up like kippers. It's palpably untrue that the profit motive (which is the single driving force behind business) will always mean better performance - the last few decades in the UK are littered with examples of this. But, first driven by Thatcherite idealogy and then by Blairite ignorance, the UK has chosen to believe that 'business knows best'. Which leaves Mr Crozier in the position of having been hired to run Royal Mail like a private business, judged on profit performance, and the union trying to defend both the jobs of its members (which is what it exists to do) and at the same time the principle of postal delivery as a public service. This is the key issue, and there'll be no progress until it's addressed; is the Post Office a public service, ie is everybody entitled to be able to send and receive letters and parcels at a reasonable cost in a reasonable time? OR is that service a tradeable commodity that people will choose to buy or not - or can afford to buy or not? It's up to you...
theStampede
10 October 2007 11:34AM
The mail needs to get through. It's essential to the smooth running of the country and can't be held hostage by a few people on strike.
With that in mind, I think it's time the government broke the monopoly RM have over deliveries of mail and open the market up to other companies who can hopefully do the job better and cheaper. It would also have the advantage that, should there be a strike at one company, responsibility for delivering their mail could be temporarily shared out by other companies. This should be a statutory responsibility that ALL companies delivering mail would sign to agree to. Customers could also choose which company to patronise based on, amongst other things, their industrial relations record.
As for paying more to send mail to places that are hard to reach or far away, why is this unfair? I don't expect to send a package to Australia for the same price as I would France. So why should I expect to pay the same to mail something to some remote part of Scotland as I would the nearest big city?
Basing charges to the customer on the cost of actually delivering mail to their intended destination would save a lot of businesses money.
I also can't see why, at the moment, I am expected to pay extra money when I post a valuable item to insure against incompetence/carelessness/theft by RM employees. This is unacceptable. ANY other business would rightly compensate customers if something was left in their care and was then stolen by their employees.
Finally, tampering with the mail by people who are entrusted to deliver it needs to be considered a very serious offence, worthy of jail time.
perspen
10 October 2007 11:47AM
I just want to say ,I have been a postman for 28 years and have seen many changes in the post office when I first started in 1979 the mail we used to have to deliver was one third of what we now have to take out each day my start time in the morning is 5.35 am you are allowed one 10 minute break and 30 minutes for afternoon dinner
I start at 4.30 am.I do not take the 10 or 30 min break so I start 1 hour early and forgo the meal breaks 1 hour 40 minutes gained I also use my own car ( at my expense )using my bike is very very slow so I can finish maybe 45 minutes early postmen who do not use their own cars and take their meal breaks finish 1 maybe 2 hours over their finishing times
Charl
10 October 2007 11:50AM
One thing that I noticed on emigrating to the UK in 1996 was the almost total lack of use of PO Boxes by the general public. In South Africa, where I come from, and I imagine many other countries, virtually every post office has a rack of, say, 200 mailboxes (many, many more in larger POs)which you can rent for a nominal fee. You pick up your mail at the post office whenever you want.
Now this doesn't mean that street deliveries don't happen. Yes they do, but there is far less demand for them. in certain areas regarded as 'wealthy' where everyone has cars, there aren't any street deliveries, but this is by no means the norm. But I for one would not mind being able to pick up my post at my local PO, at any time of the day or night, using my key, knowing that if mail was sent to my street address it would arrive. Just perhaps not as often.
Just think also of the saving in effort in not having to redirect your mail if you move (within the local area of course). I've moved within my town six times in ten years; every time I have to send out innumerable change of address letters and have my mail redirected.
Just a suggestion.
boomonkey
10 October 2007 11:55AM
perspen - By using your car at your own expense management will be seeking to take those 45 minutes you provide out of your hours. The RM management need to realise that they actually need more staff, and need to treat them a darn sight better. By using your own car in the long term your inviting them to cut man hours from your depot.
funwithwhips
10 October 2007 12:02PM
I am waiting for a load of stuff, but I fully support the strikers. You cannot keep rushing forward with the ideas of privatization, efficiency drives etc.
We have seen what privatization did to the gas,electricity,water,railways, prices went through the roof and service went down. People like myself complained non stop about it, but the usual suspects went on about efficiencies. You are ALREADY complaining about the loss of the morning and the 2nd post, you are ALREADY complaining about lost mail and the fact that you can no longer guarantee next day delivery without paying £4 for it. Yet you happily denigrate the people who are trying to halt the fall of service, you abuse the people who are risking their jobs to say "STOP!" to the management and you want cheap,underpaid immigrants to delivery your credit cards and expensive gifts?!!!
Privatization has been a failure in EVERY aspect for EVERY industry and has only succeeded in huge amounts of public and tax payers money being shoveled to foreign investors and investment schemes.
If you carry on having a go at the strikers, DONT complain in 5 years time when there is no such thing as next day delivery, when you have to pay £10 to send a birthday card to the edge of cornwall and your credit cards disappear into some hole.
AndronicusComnenus
10 October 2007 12:06PM
"The current Royal Mail service is rotten and is stuck in a 1950s timewarp."
and that's part of what makes the postman's job so difficult! You wonder why so much of your stuff has gone missing? You should try sorting mail on a frame designed for 1960's levels of post, where each house only space for 1 or two large letters. Often, the postmen and women have trouble doing their job simply because they aren't provided with the tools they need.
markbraund
10 October 2007 8:21AM
Excellent analysis Gregor. As a society, we seem to have forgotten that there are values other than efficiency and profit, like providing gainful employment to thousands of people, or offering a nationwide daily postal delivery service to virtually every home in the country, something a privatised mail service would never be able to do.