In the sorting office

This is a letter written to the London Review of Books by a postal worker in London

Like Roy Mayall writing in your issue of 24 September, I am a postman and concerned at the absence in the media of any account of how mail delivery is organised and what Royal Mail’s modernisation programme entails. The programme was introduced because the popularity of email and texting has caused a drop in mail volume. Royal Mail’s first step was to reduce the number of walks. It did this by cutting some walks in each area and making the remaining walks longer. A postman who normally delivered mail to six streets, say, now found himself delivering to eight or nine. During the summer months, when mail volumes were low, he could, perhaps, just cope with this. But as autumn begins and the Christmas catalogues start to come out, every week and sometimes every day can be heavy. In the run-up to last Christmas, there were postmen who only finished their walks at 7 or 8 p.m., sometimes two or three times a week. In one depot alone, around 15 postmen phoned in sick. This Christmas, with the even longer walks, it could be worse. Royal Mail is a strong promoter of general health and safety, but as the walks lengthen and the loads increase, many of us feel that our own health isn’t being taken into consideration.

Why i’m onstrike today

From today’s Guardian

Posties and the service we provide are being sacrificed on the altar of profit. We’re fighting back

I will be out on strike today. Yesterday the load was light in the delivery office where I work, because of strike action in other parts of Royal Mail. That will make the backlog on Monday all the greater – and that is a good thing. In London we have been on strike for months and each have lost nearly £1,000 in wages. Royal Mail wants to appear as if it doesn’t care about the strike and is simply ploughing on with its changes, so it good to see the action is having an impact.

After all this time and lost money we want to get something out of the strike. So when we heard rumours that it was going to be called off, we were worried. It seems plain from the attitude of Adam Crozier and other Royal Mail senior management that they are not yet ready to compromise.

Leeds Cleaning Strike

600 members of GMB and Unison have been on strike since the 7^th September over Leeds Council’s proposals to level down pay for workers in the refuse and street cleaning department to achieve equal pay. These workers face pay cuts of up to £6,000 down from an average of £18,000. The City Council is run by a Lib Dem/Tory administration.

 

Tim Roache, GMB Regional Secretary today reacted to the 92% vote by union members of the cleaning staff in Leeds City Council to reject the council’s ‘final offer’ and to continue the strike now in its seventh week.

 

He said, “GMB members rejected the offer for a number of reasons. First, a significant number of the strikers are being asked to work longer and harder and in return they are expected to take pay cuts of over £1,000. They cannot afford pay cuts of this magnitude. Second, the offer from the council to alleviate the pay cuts of up to £6,000 involves new productivity elements with which there are problems. The main problem is that GMB members feel that the productivity targets are unachievable in that the council expects bin lift rates of 220 properties per hour. Such performance levels are unachievable. The members rightly feel that the scheme will never deliver the money and that they will still be facing the substantial and unaffordable pay cuts.

 

GMB members want to see Leeds City Council adopt the same approach adopted elsewhere in Yorkshire in introducing equal pay in the Council that involves levelling up women’s pay and not levelling down men’s pay.

 

The City Council has an annual wage bill of £830 million. There are 663 people employed by the Council who earn over £50,000 a year. Of these, 67 earn over £80,000 and 19 over £100,000. Leeds is the only authority in Yorkshire that has failed to resolve the equal pay issue with its street cleaning and refuse workers. It is increasingly looking like that there is an absence of political will to sort this issue out without attacking the wage levels of the lowest paid employees in the Council.”

 

Donations to the two union strike funds:

 

The address to send the cheques may payable to ‘GMB strike fund’ to GMB strike fund, GMB Yorkshire & North Derbyshire Region, Grove Hall, 60 College Grove Road, Wakefield, WF1 3RN.

 

Donations to the hardship fund can be marked for the attention of Loraine Senior and sent to UNISON, Yorkshire and Humberside Region, Commerce House, Wade Lane, Leeds LS2 8NJ. Cheques should be made payable to UNISON Yorkshire and Humberside Region.

Mexican Government seizes power plant, liquidates dissident union

Over the weekend Federal Police seized the plants of the Central Light and Power Company of Mexico, which provides electricity to Mexico City and several states in central Mexico. The government of President Felipe Calderón announced that the company would be liquidated and all its approximately 45,000 workers fired, which would mean the destruction of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME). Another 20,000 retirees are also now severed from their former employer and their union. The government’s action directly affects at least 250,000 workers and their families in the Federal District and states neighboring the capital.

The government wants to eliminate SME because the union has been a leading force in organizing to oppose Calderón’s economic policies, and in particular its plan to privatize the electrical industry. The government will apparently put the Central Light and Power facilities under the control of the Federal Electrical Commission whose workers are represented by a union loyal to the government. The union argues that this will be the first step to privatizing the industry, though the government denies this.

UNITE behind the Postal Workers

Royal Mail Managers across Britain are being used in an effort to weaken the postal workers and their CWU union in the run-up to national strikes.

It may surprise many to know that a lot of these managers are members of the union Unite in the CMA section and have been advised by their National official only to “work normally” and not to “transgress upon the dispute”.

However, managers are travelling hundreds of miles in order to do work that is proper to CWU members and to attempt to drive down the backlog of post that has built up during the regional strikes. At the beginning of October, for example, managers from Belfast were working in Bristol. Swindon Managers were in London, and Scottish Managers were clearing packets in East Anglia.

Managers are also co-operating with Royal Mail’s plans to set up ‘strike breaking centres’, and are bullying and harassing postal workers, and refusing normal union facilities.

As a member of Unite myself I say it’s a scandal some Unite-CMA members are volunteering for these anti-union activities.

I stand 100 percent with the CWU against Royal Mail and condemn Royal mail management for organising scabbing and attacking postal workers and their union.

This is a key issue for our union and the movement organised scabbing by Unite members is outrageous. All Unite/CMA members who are volunteering for scabbing should stop immediately.

It is likely that there are many managers who agree with the CWU’s strike to defend our public postal service but are being put under pressure themselves Unite should defend any CMA member who refuses to participate in the scabbing operation and shows solidarity with CWU members in dispute.

I further believe that Unite nationally should publicly condemn CMA members who volunteer for scabbing and, with those who intimidate and bully postal workers should be expelled from the union.

Jerry Hicks, Unite member.

GMB Engineering Construction Workers Vote To Reject Employers “Final Offer”

GMB Engineering Construction Workers Vote To Reject Employers Final Offer On Pay And Conditions

 Members insist on the skills and unemployment registers and to copper-fasten the pre award audit to screen out employers who plan to undercut the agreed rates and terms and conditions says GMB 5 Oct 2009

Leeds Refuse workers strike

GMB Central Executive Council provide £10,000 to hardship fund for victimised workers facing pay cuts and launch appeal to all 3,000 GMB Branches for support for the Leeds strikers

GMB today disclosed that the Lib Dem/Tory administration in Leeds City Council failed to collect almost £17 million in unpaid Council and Business taxes in the year to 31st Match 2009. The figures are as follow: uncollected Council Tax £9,247,000; uncollected non domestic rates £7,484,000; a total uncollected taxes of £16,731,000. The figures are from the Department of Communities and Local Government and are from the tax year 2008/9.

London FBU: Industrial action to begin as talks break down

London FBU is set to commence industrial action next week after talks aimed at averting a dispute ended in deadlock. The union will announce its ballot result on Thursday, and senior officials say they are expecting a big ‘yes’ vote.

The action is in response to a sustained period of aggression by London Fire Brigade managers, which has seen attacks to a number of conditions of service. Brigade managers and union leaders attended two full days of talks, which stretched late into the night, but the brigade was not prepared to concede the union’s demands.

Occupation holds back Vestas factory closure date as company extends consultation period

The occupation of the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight today passed another significant milestone with the workers holding back the scheduled closure date of the facility and with the company writing to staff this morning confirming that the consultation has been extended indefinitely – a move described by Vestas union RMT as a “massive victory.”

Vestas had planned to close the factory today – Friday 31 July – but as a result of the occupation, and the global campaign in support of the workforce, they have been pushed back and the extension of the consultation with the workforce means that there is a serious opportunity to draw up a rescue package similar to the one supported by the Scottish Parliament earlier this year which saved the Vestas factory in Kintyre.

RMT pledges full support to Vestas occupation

TRANSPORT UNION RMT today pledged full support to the workers occupying the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight and confirmed that RMT general secretary Bob Crow will be making a solidarity visit to the occupation at 6pm tomorrow evening (Thursday 23rd July).