17.10.2007

Reject the rotten deal

Benjamin Klein urges militant postal workers to organise independently and develop links with others in the public sector. But more is needed

Leaders of the Communication Workers Union are desperately trying to sell the deal they have negotiated with Royal Mail following weeks of official (and recently unofficial) industrial action.

Royal Mail put forward an offer whose details have still not been made public, although they are said to include the closure of (predominantly smaller) offices, an increase in the retirement age to 62, the exclusion of new workers from the final salary pension scheme, if not its abolition for all workers - all in exchange for a 6.9% pay increase over 18 months and possibly a lump-sum payment (£175 has been quoted). Clearly this would represent a defeat for the membership, not even addressing the question of working 'flexibility'. What is worse, the members have been deliberately starved of information relating to the proposed agreement.

However, the deal struck by CWU leaders Billy Hayes and Dave Ward and TUC general secretary Brendan Barber has caused deep divisions on the union's executive, resulting in stalemate. Although all industrial action has been called off, the executive has refused to endorse it after more than two days of talks.

As any deal with the bosses is contingent upon a ballot of the CWU's 130,000 postal workers, the executive must be sure of being able to sell it - given the current militant mood, it is more than feasible that they would firmly reject such an obvious sell-out. Only recently, for example, the CWU membership rejected the executive's proposal of Alan Johnson for deputy leader of the Labour Party. Indeed, if the 'Urgent open letter to the CWU executive' from CWU militants Dave Chapple and Pete Firmin is anything to go by - "you will not be forgiven "¦ by postal workers present, those retired or those of the future" if the EC caves in - then the executive will certainly have come under some considerable pressure.

Given the crude aggression with which management has been attempting to force its agenda on the workers, there exists a huge reservoir of anger. It is estimated that management proposals for "efficiency cuts" over the next five years will jeopardise around 40,000 jobs and put 2,000 postal offices at risk. It could also pave the way for the complete privatisation of Royal Mail, which despite losing its status as a monopoly at the start of 2006, still accounts for the overwhelming bulk of postal services to businesses and households.

Despite some private couriers making a killing during the strike and being able to deliver mail for a substantial amount of customers, Royal Mail is, in effect, still the monopoly in the postal service. It is run on the basis of pseudo-profit, with the government as its largest shareholder and with a network with which no other company can compete.

Competition, however, is the official buzzword of this dispute, and in some big-money areas Royal Mail is indeed struggling to contend with competitors who are attempting to muscle in on the market by using more advanced automated sorting methods to undercut Royal Mail. The threat of 'going under' to the competition and the consequent need to 'modernise' and 'become more efficient' is being used as an ideological stick with which to beat the workers into line under Gordon Brown's plan of limiting pay rises to below inflation, slashing pensions and getting rid of 'old-fashioned' or so-called 'Spanish' practices.

What we are seeing, of course, is the gradual and secretive handing over of Royal Mail to businessmen such as Allan Leighton and Adam Crozier, who are conspiring with the government to run the service in a way that can squeeze the most they can out of the workers - predominantly through the introduction of more cost-cutting automation into sorting offices, thereby axing thousands of jobs. Crozier himself is said to have granted himself an annual salary, pension and bonus deal worth over £1 million - something which even the Tories were moaning about.

The CWU action has had quite a considerable impact on both business and the public - underlying how essential Royal Mail's comprehensive service is, despite competition in some profitable areas. Indeed, despite the official strikes being limited to at most two days and the widespread use of courier services and other postal companies, the union's action wreaked havoc and led to the disruption of everyday mail as well as to a huge increase in costs for many companies - London businesses alone are estimated to have lost £300 million pounds in the course of the action, while Royal Mail itself has been hit hard, with estimated losses of £200 million. Gordon Brown, the Confederation of British Industry and other tribunes of British capital have been at pains to express their discontent with the strike as being "unnecessary". No wonder.

Management, however, did not concede much. In fact, it was determined to meet the action head on, deliberately provoking further unofficial walkouts in Liverpool and east London. The intention has been to weaken one of the few remaining powerful unions in order to open the way for imposing further and worse changes in the future.

Particularly encouraging has been the reaction of workers to the systematic bullying that management subjected them to following the fourth day of official action last week - the so-called 'wildcat strikes'. Militants were targeted for disciplinary action and working hours were arbitrarily changed - an obvious attempt to intimidate and provoke.

As the backlog of mail piled up to the rafters in numerous sorting offices, management called upon recruitment agencies to pull in scab workers, including impoverished students, many of whom, given the generally low levels of class-consciousness in society as a whole, were willing to work on the side to reduce their overdrafts a little.

Liverpool was the bulwark of the action, with 800 workers voting to ignore the official CWU call to return to work. As we go to press, they are still adamant that they will not budge, and on October 17 were joined by postal workers in West Yorkshire.

Of course, the anti-union legislation, under which all unofficial action is unlawful, is always a threat - union leaders must disown such action in order to protect official funds. It also allows for injunctions to be won on the most spurious of technical grounds, as occurred last week, when the high court ruled against action planned for October 15-17. It was not entirely unexpected that Royal Mail would win such an injunction, but it was enough to get CWU negotiators back round the table for secretive talks.

A key political question that this dispute raises is the relationship between the Labour Party and the CWU itself, because in the last instance, it is the Labour government, supported by some well-paid lackeys, that is the boss here. Union funds are bankrolling a New Labour project that then proceeds to attack those who have contributed to the funds, in a situation akin to paying the hangman for the rope. Moreover, the relationship is not just a financial one, but also political - unfortunately one of political subservience though, as exemplified by the CWU voting to support the sidelining of branch or union motions at the Labour Party conference.

Yet what is the way forward? Clearly, breaking with the Labour Party would not by itself empower CWU members collectively. The disaffiliation of the RMT and FBU has not resulted in the establishment of any new leftwing formation - although, of course, RMT general secretary Bob Crow has been trying to win his union to support an electoral challenge to Labour in the May 2008 Greater London Authority elections.

As for the so-called 'awkward squad' of Tony Woodley, Derek Simpson et al, in spite of some left-leaning rhetoric, they have exposed themselves as offering no viable strategy for working class struggles. Labourism is their be-all and end-all.

The particularly resistance of the postal workers notwithstanding, this dispute unfortunately seems to be typical of the struggles waged by the British working class in recent times - almost all ending in retreat passed off by union bureaucrats as the 'best available settlement' or even, in the case of the PCSU pensions sell-out, a "victory".

Calls in the left press for 'united public sector action' and the coordination of unofficial strikes across union lines in order to circumvent the stifling grip that the bureaucracy are undoubtedly correct in principle, but miss the core issue. In the absence of a political leadership that is willing to defy the state there is no chance that such coordination could be won, let alone directed towards victory.

Militant postal workers must organise themselves independently of the CWU bureaucracy. They must reach out to other public sector workers too. Not simply on the basis of trade union politics, however.  Yes, Brown's pay limit can and must be broken. The slashing of jobs halted. But we must have a clear perspectives for the future.

Our class can only go forward if it explicitly challenges the state and fights for a different social system - a system not based on profit, but need. That means a democratic republic and ending the capitalist system of production.

Of course, that immediately raises the question of a political party. Confessional sects, halfway house coalitions, yet more attempts to 'reclaim' the Labour Party - all produce round after round of failure and demoralisation.

The fact of the matter is that the only sort of party that can successfully lead the fight against capitalism and for socialism is a mass Communist Party. A party that is committed to democracy in society and democracy in the working class. A party united in action but where there is freedom of criticism.