Royal Mail – “Downstream Access”

Downstream Access

By Roy Mayall

Postal workers will certainly know about Downstream Access, but how many members of the public have heard about it or understand what is going on?

The following is a user’s guide to Downstream Access and its impact on the Royal Mail.

Reintroduce the postal monopoly of Royal Mail

You may have heard about the postal worker blogger who goes by the name of Roy Mayall. He came to prominence via a blog on the London Review of Books and through his book, ‘Dear Granny Smith’. Roy’s reports made sense of the situation in Royal Mail. He has given a postal workers eye view of the impact of liberalisation on the people who do the work and the service they are able to deliver. You can read his blog here.

Roy has drawn to our attention a Downing Street site petition calling for the reintroduction of the postal monopoly to Royal Mail. You can sign it here. Please do.

NUHW Landslide Election in S. California

Yesterday, 2,300 caregivers at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California won a landslide election victory to join NUHW and leave SEIU. According to official NLRB results, 85% of the caregivers voted for NUHW, with only 13% voting for SEIU.

The vote totals for three separate bargaining units are as follows:

RN Unit: 746 (NUHW), 36 (SEIU) and 3 (No Union).
Psych-Social Unit: 717 (NUHW), 192 (SEIU) and 7 (No Union).
Healthcare Professionals Unit: 189 (NUHW), 29 (SEIU) and 13 (No Union).

PCS National executive committee agrees industrial action ballot timetable – branch briefing

Branch briefing

The national executive committee has agreed to proceed to ballot members on a campaign of national industrial action, with the aim of securing an agreement that would protect members’ entitlements under the civil service compensation scheme (CSCS) and provide for acceptable protection for members in the nuvos pension scheme not covered by the CSCS. The ballot will run from February 4 to February 25.

‘We told the bosses we’d escalate if they didn’t meet our demands’

Lessons of the North Devon Hospital dispute

One of the main aims of the conference is to learn from successful workers’ struggle. Unison union members at North Devon Hospital have won a massive victory in their fight for sick pay and fair terms.

Mark Harper, chair of North Devon Unison health branch (pc), spoke to Socialist Worker

Irish public sector workers begin work-to-rule

More than 300,000 public sector workers in the Republic of Ireland are to begin a national work-to-rule in protest at pay cuts introduced in the budget.

Civil servants, teachers and nurses are among those who will join the campaign of non co-operation.

The Irish government has said it needs to find 3bn euro in savings next year to deal with the Irish economic crisis.

However, Jimmy Kelly, from the trade union, Unite, said the wage cuts were not acceptable.

Sixth Iranian Sugar Union Leader in Prison – Act Now!

Reza Rakhshan, communications officer for the Haft Tapeh independent sugarworkers union in southern Iran, was arrested by security agents at his workplace on January 4 and was only released from Shush prison on January 20 after being charged with “endangering national security” for his union activity.

At the time of his arrest, Rakhshan was still awaiting final sentencing for the convictions last year on similar charges which put 5 other union leaders in prison. Like union president Ali Nejati, the new charges mean he could face lengthy back-to-back sentences which could see him imprisoned for years. Married, with a child, the 39-year old union officer has worked at Haft Tapeh for 5 years.

UCU calls on University of Leeds to halt ‘devastating’ cuts as strike ballot launches

13 January 2010

The fight to save jobs at the University of Leeds will intensify this week as members of UCU are balloted for industrial action in defence against job cuts.

UCU members will today hold a special meeting at the university that will mark the launch of the ballot.

The union is campaigning against compulsory redundancies and will today call on the vice-chancellor, Professor Michael Arthur, to rebuild trust with staff by putting his plans for mass job losses on hold and by working together with the union to oppose funding cuts in higher education.

Universities are facing cuts of more than £900 million over the next three years and in an interview with yesterday’s Guardian newspaper Michael Arthur acknowledged that making savings would have a ‘devastating effect’ on staff and students.

£75 million wasted on rail franchising since 2003

RAIL UNION RMT today slammed the government for “presiding over a culture of private waste” on the railways after new figures obtained by RMT parliamentary convenor John McDonnell revealed that the cost of designing and tendering rail franchises since 2003 is a staggering £75 million.

(Royal Mail) Loopholes

This is from Roy Mayall’s blog on the London Review of Books site.

I was talking to my union rep about the attendance procedure, the process by which posties are threatened with dismissal for being ill. ‘The union must have negotiated this,’ I said. ‘If the union hadn’t negotiated it, it wouldn’t exist.’

‘But if the union hadn’t negotiated it,’ my union rep said, ‘it would be worse. Anyway, it’s not the procedure that’s wrong, it’s bad management and the way they use it.’