22.08.1996

Postal strike escalates

Having firmly rejected their negotiating team’s recommendation to accept the latest Royal Mail version of ‘teamworking’, the Communication Workers Union postal executive is now threatening an escalation of the action against it. It has called a four-day strike for the end of August unless management resumes negotiations.

This rare refusal by a union executive to concede the imposition of some compromise ‘solution’ has provoked predictable outrage from the government and Royal Mail itself. Managing director Richard Dykes claimed that the executive was completely out of touch with its membership and alleged that 19,400 CWU members refused to strike last week. That would leave a mere 120,000 workers solidly behind the action, but the union disputes Dykes’ figures and claims an increase in support.

Union activists up and down the country dismiss such management and government propaganda with contempt. Kevin O’Hara, local rep at Mount Pleasant sorting office in London, commented: “I haven’t seen a hell of a lot of government spokesmen in this office.” The Birmingham area rep, Mick Lynch, told me that support for the strikes remained well over 90%, with any new strike-breakers matched by others won to join the action.

“A four-day strike will not change that. If it drifted into all-out action, then some people might become edgy, but we are winning the argument with the members and the public. I believe the executive has a good strategy and there is good support for their policy.”

In fact the CWU is out of touch with the membership only in as much as it has been reluctant to launch official strike action. The union’s top leaders, particularly joint general secretary Alan Johnson, have been dragged kicking and screaming into this dispute through the gradual build-up of resentment from the members.

The government’s attempts to undermine the action have been twofold. First, it has suspended Royal Mail’s monopoly for letters, allowing strikebreaking firms to step in. Unsurprisingly however, there have been no takers. A spokesperson for Federal Express, a US-based package delivery company, said: “It’s not really our market. The post office is a pretty good operation and offers a good service when you compare it with others around the world.”

TNT, the leading private package firm, would only be prepared to set up a rival letter company if there was a subsidised ‘duopoly’ situation, similar to BT and Mercury.

The threat cuts no ice with union members either. As Mick Lynch says, “We can’t avoid standing up to the employer because the government is threatening to drop the monopoly every five minutes.”

The second string to the government’s bow has been its threat to ban public sector strikes. While this might set bureaucrats squirming at the thought of further losing control, it holds very little fear for union militants. Kevin O’Hara points to the rash of unofficial ‘unlawful’ action that postal workers have taken over the past couple of years: “Given the present anti-trade union laws, we’re not that far away from it already.”

Union militants say that in some ways unofficial action is easier to organise: “You just walk in and call the members out,” said one. While that may be true, uncoordinated local action can never stop the overall employers’ offensive. Neither can it raise workers’ sights to the necessary political plane.

One area where unofficial action has not yet occurred is Birmingham. But area rep Mick Lynch can see that changing:

“After the national dispute is over, we could well have many more local problems and industrial relations continuing to worsen. Perhaps we will see unofficial action here too.”

However much trade secretary Ian Lang may rant about the CWU “holding the country to economic ransom”, many workers have reached the point where they are no longer prepared to see further erosion of their conditions.

Peter Manson