Victory to the Postal Workers!
For a long time now the Labour government has been
overseeing a campaign to undermine the public postal service in Britain. 60,000 jobs have gone in recent years, along with 3,500 post offices. Under the
guise of a “modern-isation” agreement signed off with the Communication Workers
Union (CWU) in 2007, management has indulged in a campaign of petty
intimidation of the remaining staff. Whilst adopting an aloof pose, earnestly
enjoining management and unions to settle their differences over how to
“modernise”, the government is clearly committed to the break-up and
privatisation of Royal Mail (RM). The cat was already out of the bag long
before Business Secretary Mandelson tore up Labour’s phony “no privatisation”
pledges back in the spring.
Mandelson’s
intervention promised a bill to authorise the infusion of private capital in
line with the free market drum being beaten in the Hooper Report. This apparent
plea for subsidy from private enterprise in reality is an offer of subsidy from
the public purse to the privateers. Whilst predatory entrepreneurs can look
forward to cherry picking the profitable areas of RM’s current operations, they
will of course remain exempt from the unprofitable “last mile” obligation
shouldered by RM – i.e. the expensive obligation to deliver mail on a universal
basis, as a matter of public service.
The CWU’s popular
campaign against privatisation, drawing in its wake some Labour backbench
“rebels” fearful of losing their seats over the issue, persuaded the government
to hang fire for the moment. That the reprieve is only temporary has been made
abundantly clear by the intensifying campaign of bullying and harassment
launched by Crozier and co. against Royal Mail employees. The provocations
include the imposition of a wage freeze, dictation of new roster patterns and
automation without negotiation, the conversion of full time to part time jobs,
the refusal to draft in cover for leave and sick absence and a host of other
petty tyrannies calculated to produce, not an efficient service, but a
demoralised workforce. That demoralisation is aggravated by the repetition ad
nauseam that the hole in the RM pension fund can only be plugged by involving
private capital. At the same time the public service offered, for a long time
favourable in comparison with the rest of Europe, has suffered deterioration,
with the cancellation of second deliveries and Sunday collections, the late
arrival of the remaining first delivery, stamp prices in excess of inflation –
and all accompanied by an orchestrated campaign of badmouthing of the service
strongly reminiscent of the knocking copy which sought to prepare public
opinion for the break up and sale of British Rail.
Faced with all this,
postal workers had already spent much of 2009 coming out in a series of rolling
regional strikes. Arguably this pin-prick approach kept up a steady pressure
on Royal Mail management, and cumulatively produced some spectacular mail
backlogs. But such a war of attrition also runs the risk of losing the impact
and momentum of an all-out indefinite strike. More crucially, the CWU’s
failure at its conference to break the link with Labour, despite intense
pressure to do so from activists sickened at Labour treachery over
privatisation, still keeps the anti-privatisation campaign hemmed in behind the
perspective of “putting pressure on Labour to do the right thing”. Lowering
the political horizon in this way risks confusing workers as to the real
character of the capitalist crisis they are facing. The struggle to resist the
efforts of the capitalist state to make workers pay for the crisis of
capitalism will be much strengthened when Labour opportunism is rooted out of
the labour movement.
Even now, with the enfeebling influence of the
Labour party still widespread, the postal workers have demonstrated the
combative spirit of the working class. Once the opportunity arose to ballot
for full scale industrial action, 76% of those who voted jumped at the chance.
The ensuing national strikes have won solid support, raising the struggle
another notch. We can assume that Brendan Barber and Gordon Brown are putting
maximum pressure on the CWU to curb its militancy. Yet despite this, and
despite Royal Mail renting a 30,000 strong scab army from Manpower and
elsewhere to run a shadow operation in places like Dartford and Severn Beach,
postal workers remain determined in their struggle for justice, assisted by
support groups mushrooming around the country. We wish them every success in
this struggle, and urge the CWU to make haste in unchaining itself from the
corpse of the Labour party.
Statement
issued 30 October 2009 by
Communist
Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) PO
Box 110, Normanton, WF6 1XZ Tel: 01924 218737
email: info@cpgb-ml.org website: www.cpgb-ml.org