Royal Mail vote for settlement
By Richie Venton
Royal Mail workers have voted to accept the deal negotiated by their national
leadership.
In a turnout of 64 per cent, a majority of 64 per cent voted to accept. But
this is no ringing endorsement of the settlement reached, which falls miles
short of the demands of the 130,000 strikers who braved management intimidation
and carried out eight powerful days of strike action over the past six months.
Quite the opposite, as Dave Chapple, from Bristol Amal branch of the CWU
told us at a meeting in Glasgow of the National Shop Stewards Network:
“No, this was no vote of confidence in the deal - which is a shite deal.
It was because members felt the task of taking on the entire union leadership
was too daunting.
“Royal Mail will now try to close Mail Centres, with Coventry first in
line.
They’ll try to get posties who have just finished a ten mile round
- in my case 15 miles a day - to do ‘another half hour’, when
in fact it is another two hours’ work.
“There will be unofficial walkouts in the strong areas, and they’ll
be walked all over in the weaker areas.
“Posties with 20 years service in their 40s stand to lose over £30,000
in pensions.
“I believe this defeat is all to do with CWU general secretary Billy
Hayes’ love
affair with the Labour government.
“He got a phone call from either Gordon Brown or John Hutton, with threats,
on the Friday before the last Monday/Tuesday strikes were due [in October].
This was shortly after Brown told us ‘to get back to work’.
“That weekend, during talks, Royal Mail managers took out an injunction
against the strikes.
“But instead of walking out of these talks in protest to lead the strikes,
Billy Hayes and Dave Ward stayed in the talks - and the CWU lawyer, not even
the elected leadership - called off the strikes. Our leaders were frightened
of upsetting the Labour government.
“It’s a defeat, though not a devastating one. The CWU’s relationship
with the Labour Party caused it and I hope the union will pull out of the
Labour Party at our May conference.”
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