Post Office staff in strike vote

will be interesting to see how this pans out

i'd say it's also an attempt to outsource the jobs to non-unionised, precarious retail workers who are usually younger, less aware of their rights and far less united. i wouldn't sday it was an attempt to break up working class militancy, but it's certainly a useful side effect, from the bosses' point of view.

what happened about cwu's threat of a national ballot over the unilateral pay offer a few months back?

just checked, and the royal mail negotiated in the end - and the workforce is currently voting on the offer.

more or less, but the former is about straightforward economics, whereas the latter is a deliberate ploy.

true. i suppose i was looking at it from 'why would the bosses do it?' point of view

I know posties are traditionally militant and respect pickets but is this still true?
We haven't had a regular postman on my street for about 4 years now. I thought there was a lot of casualisation even before this new thing (which I'm not quite sure I understand.

Didn't JDMF say in the recent uni dispute that one of the local P.O. delivery drivers, refused to cross their picket line in manchester?

and to think i nearly became one... so close and yet so far!

http://www.cwu.org/

Yeah, it's come up a few times. Posties are apparently very good about not crossing pickets. I can also remember someone (Ed probably) saying that they wouldn't cross a picket at Sussex Uni either.

They've already done the proposed privatising out here. Probably about 80% of the retail outlets are in retail stores, mostly drug stores. I know the union tried to fight it, but whatever they did it obviously didn't work. It was a pretty insane wage cut though, I mean a retail member under the CUPW contract makes about 24$/hour by the time they have the seniority to get into retail (they are pretty coveted because its easy work) whereas I knew someone that worked the retail branch and makes $8.00 an hour.

1,000 workers in essex, notts, crick, london voted to strike against heavy-handed management today. though the cwu official made it sound more threat than reality.

see here

iirc from the last wildcat, the Royal Mail's management have a bit of a rep for bullying people.

2 strike ballots going on, and the leadership getting some hositlity for recommending the new wage/conditions deal...

I think what was being talked about in the original poat was connected to P.O. counters (the post office you go to in the strret). This is a different division from letters (the people who deliver your letters), and doesn't have the same tradition of militancy.
I am quite sure that the union will do a good job of keeping them seperate.
Devrim

Hmmm, there are already deals with some retail stores already aren't there? I wonder what happened with those, like the mini-post offices in Co-ops or newsagents? Then again those people wear Royal Mail uniforms so maybe they're still post office employees, but the WH Smith ones won't be?

The po counters that are in retail stores or run by businesses like Travellex, have been 'franchised' - ie privatised. They usually replace Post Offices which have been closed down. The existing Post Office staff are usually given the option of transferring to another Post Office if there are vacancies (increasingly unlikely as the number dwindles) or taking redundancy. They are replaced in the franchise offices by staff who are employed on worse pay and conditions. At first they did not wear PO Counter uniforms, but in the last couple of years they have been given the uniforms to make the public believe they are Post Office staff. They are not unionised.

It's both. Post office Management save money by franchising the counters to private businesses, who undertake to run them at a lower cost (mainly by paying the staff less), also they get rid of their unionised workforce.

Right interesting, I didn't realise that. That's pretty shit then, and the thin end of the wedge is definitely in already, with WHSmith being a much bigger bit...

Was there any resistance to this in the first place?

The franchising policy started under the Tories. Labour opposed it then, and when they were first elected in 1997, Margaret Beckett suspended any further franchises for a few months. Then Peter Mandelson took over as DTI Secretary and continued them. There has been opposition from the CWU, staff, and customers in many places, and has been occasionally successful. This seems to be what is happening with the current WH Smith scenario.

The other reason for the franchising is that PO Management can then sell off the closed Post Offices which are generally in High Street locations and therefore worth quite a lot.

Clever thinking you will make a great Capitalist.

Too late for that.

Cheers for the useful info tony.

FYI, in v4 of our site we're having more industry-related content, so related to this thread would be:
http://libcom.org/sectors/communications
http://libcom.org/tags/cwu
http://libcom.org/tags/post-service
http://libcom.org/tags/royal-mail

Thanks for the related threads. Incidentally PO Counter workers in Manchester and South Wales have voted overwhelmingly for strike action against the WH Smith franchising.

Going back to the post about posties not crossing picket lines. It's pretty much true, or at least I have never heard of a postie crossing a picket line. When the local government workers were on strike, the postie refused to cross our picket line. It's just not the done thing and this seems to have been maintained despite all the casualisation, management intimidation etc.
The thing about counters and delivery being divided, the problem is that most posties on the walks and in the D/MLOs don't have much if any contact with the counters people. Postmandrivers have more contact. The union doesn't attempt to break this down, obviously.

No CWU postal worker (which is most postmen/women) would cross a picket line.

The Thatcher Government divided the Post Office into separate Companies - Royal Mail (Letters), Parcelforce, Post Office Counters Limited, and Girobank (subsequently sold to the Alliance& Leicester), as a prelude to privatisation. It also makes solidarity action between different sections unlawful under the Anti Union Laws, as it would be deemed secondary action by the Courts, which scares the Union Bureaucracy as the Union would face fines or sequestration of their funds.

The CWU structure reflects this, and you are right that there is virtually no contact between the different sections. There have been some exceptions - in Glasgow, the postal workers and counterstaff were in the same Union Branch, and would all walk out during disputes, but this was some 10 years ago, and I don't know if this is the current situation