Tribune – Labour leadership gossip, news, features and comment from Britain's left-wing magazine

With a national postal strike looming, Billy Hayes explains why the workforce is taking a stand to defend the postal service

The Communication Workers Union is committed to a future for Royal Mail as an efficient, modern public service. We want the industry to utilise all the benefits of new technology and thus provide an innovative range of services for both business and domestic customers. So it is with much reluctance that the CWU has come to a position where 76 per cent of our members in Royal Mail have voted for strike action. But it is our view that a labour intensive industry cannot be modernised unless the workforce is treated with respect.

Postal workers know that the modernisation of the industry cannot include reducing services, tearing up collective agreements, bullying and cutting earnings. That is why our members and negotiators are demanding a new national agreement to carry through the modernisation of Royal Mail.

The company’s managers need to accept that their own rhetoric – about the workforce being Royal Mail’s “most valuable asset” – is actually true. Only by a new engagement with the workforce and its union can the dispute be resolved.

The Government, as the “employer of the employer”, has a role to play here. The industry can be transformed by the Government taking on its responsibility for the deficit in the pensions scheme. That would immediately provide Royal Mail with £280 million additional capital per year.

At this year’s Labour Party conference, an emergency motion was carried which urged the Government to do exactly that. The media chose to ignore this significant move. Yet were the Labour Government to act on Labour Party policy, an extended dispute may be averted.

The response of the press has been extraordinary and should remind us how strong the anti-union bias is in reporting. For example, numerous articles have been written implying that there would be no impact from a postal strike. It was further suggested that the CWU was fighting a hopeless case, much like the miners’ strike. (Let us leave aside the snobbery and obvious injustice to the mining community that a such a comparison involves.)

Mark Lawson wrote a piece along such lines for The Guardian last Friday (October 9). Why the editor of that newspaper assumed this particular journalist had some sort of special insight into the postal industry in unclear. Equally unclear is why the CWU has not, to date, been allowed the right of reply.

Subsequently, press releases were issued by a number of business organisations, representing all sizes of firms, which explained just how serious the impact of a national postal strike would be on business in this country. Now the line was how the stance of postal workers and their union was terribly irresponsible. The comparison website Kelkoo suggested that the impact of a strike could reduce the economy by £1.5 billion. Such analysis is mostly speculation, but it confirms that the postal industry remains important for our whole economy.

The postal industry has suffered from decades of under-investment, failed privatisation attempts and a botched regulatory regime. Despite this, Royal Mail has faired better in the recession than its privatised rivals, Deutsche Post and TNT. Not only does it offer a service for domestic customers at around half the price of those competitors, but it has also reached record levels of quality of service.

Of course, a national strike will not help the postal industry. Postal workers do not have a parachute out of the industry. They have to ensure that the working conditions and wages are tolerable. Postal workers and their union understand the industry better than their critics.

In recognition of the need to carry through a genuine transformation of the industry, the CWU is seeking an agreement to cover a three-year period. This would allow for the introduction of the new machinery and methods of working which are necessary to overcome the years of under-investment. Such a transformation would include new products and services to customers, as well as improved terms and conditions for postal workers.

The age of the internet and information technology has not rendered the postal industry redundant. On the contrary, it has buoyed up Royal Mail and created the basis for a new platform of services. Whatever the challenges, ultimately it is only the workforce that can meet them.

That is why the CWU regards the dispute as a fight for the future of Royal Mail, as much as a fight for the rights of postal workers.

The management must take the opportunity it has to resolve these issues progressively and successfully.

Billy Hayes is general secretary of the Communication Workers Union