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.
The next step in the modernisation was to stop overtime. The new, longer walks were generated by a computer program called Pegasus. We were assured that Pegasus had made all the new walks around three hours long. Some of the walks were indeed three hours long, and the postmen on those rounds had no trouble completing them in time. But a significant number turned out to be considerably longer – some of them up to four and a half hours long – and mail began piling up as postmen brought post back at the end of the day because they couldn’t deliver their loads without working extra, unpaid time.
The most recently introduced measure is to return from a four-day week to a five-day week. For postmen working a 40-hour week, this means there will be two hours fewer each day to deliver the same amount of post. It is now no longer possible for any postman – including those doing the three-hour walks – to complete his or her walk in the allotted time, no matter how fast they walk. As the pressures increase, many postmen who have been with Royal Mail for a long time are taking voluntary redundancy. A lot of knowledgeable, hard-working postmen are leaving.
Postmen speculate endlessly as to why Royal Mail is making it impossible for us to do our job properly. The most common theory is that Royal Mail actually wants to get rid of us and replace us with casual workers. Traditionally, Royal Mail hires casual staff to help deliver the heavy Christmas mail. This year the casuals never left. As required, they can be phoned at a moment’s notice to come in and help out. They may be asked to work for just a few hours or a whole day. If mail volumes are low, they are not called and are not paid. When paid, they are paid less per hour than the full-time postmen. And because, as casual workers, they cannot join the union, they have no representation if and when things go wrong. At present Royal Mail favours the casuals, but in time, if they start experiencing the pressures the postmen are facing now, there won’t be a union to protect them. In contrast to the casuals, postmen are mostly on 40-hour-week contracts. When they go on holiday or get sick, Royal Mail continues to pay their salaries. All these costs and difficulties fall away with casual workers. From a financial perspective, Royal Mail may think that getting rid of its long-serving postmen is worth it.
Maybe the fact that Royal Mail is now run by managers who have little or no hands-on experience and who use computer-generated models to organise everything is the explanation. We experienced this directly with Pegasus when some walks turned out to be considerably longer than others. The data that had been fed into Pegasus were standardised: each walk had a set number of destinations, with so many seconds to walk up a garden path, so many seconds to put letters through a letterbox etc. Not only did Pegasus get the total timings spectacularly wrong, but the walks made much less sense than when they were organised by the postmen themselves: for instance, a postman could find himself walking an extra 200 yards down the road to deliver mail to six letterboxes that would have more easily and naturally fitted into someone else’s walk.
A more cynical theory is that Royal Mail is being deliberately run into the ground so that when the next opportunity to privatise it comes around, people will be so fed up that they will accept it as the unavoidable solution to getting their post on time again.
A postman on a 40-hour contract works an eight-hour day on average. He or she spends the first two or three hours sorting the unsorted mail in the depots. He then takes 30 minutes for breakfast. For the next two or three hours he sequences the mail for his own walk so that he can deliver it door to door. He then has to travel to and from his walk and deliver his mail in the remaining time. It can’t be done, at least not without overtime, which Royal Mail has stopped altogether. Casual workers, however, don’t have to sort mail at the depot – this is done for them by the postmen on 40-hour contracts. Instead, they move straight to sequencing their door-to-door mail. When they leave the depot, they can take as long as they need to deliver their mail. On the heavier walks, some work 12-hour days. That’s how long it really takes to sequence and deliver some walks – and that’s without sorting!
Working for Royal Mail has become a bewildering experience. Depot managers pressure and harass us to comply to rigidly fixed unworkable schedules. They insist we take out full loads of mail, which they know and we know cannot be delivered in the allotted time. We therefore constantly bring back the undelivered surplus and waste time the following day getting it ready to take out again.

Meanwhile, the depot managers can report the walk as cleared to their superiors, who are obviously putting them under pressure too. It’s evident that some depot managers are just as unhappy with this state of affairs. Their orders are to push out as much mail every day as possible, regardless of the amount that comes back at the end of each shift.
Of course the strike is adding to the chaos, but it is not causing it. The one-day-a-week strike – now countrywide – is an attempt to pressure Royal Mail to come to the table to discuss the dire situation and a way for postmen to express support and solidarity with one another as we face an onslaught of unmeetable demands.

From today’s Guardian

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

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.

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.

UNION DETERMINED TO RESIST

At the moment 500 Federal Police officers have taken control of over 100 Light and Power plants, reportedly roughing up some workers in the process. The plants occupied by the police are being run by management and by workers from the Federal Electrical Commission.

The union had reported about 10 days before that the government was preparing to seize the plants.

The union did not physically resist the police seizure of workplaces, but called upon its members to remain calm, and declared that it would organize a peaceful and legal resistance to the takeover and the liquidation of the company. While so far there has been no serious violence, in the past the government has been quick to use force to suppress union resistance. Federal Police have been used in the last three years to attempt to break strikes of miners and steelworkers. In other past instances of government-union conflict in Mexico, such repression has led to deaths and beatings, while the government has then indicted union leaders, resulting in convictions and long jail terms.

NO SURPRISE

While the government moved suddenly over the weekend to seize the plants, its actions were no surprise. The Calderón government and its predecessors have often expressed their desire to dissolve the Central Light and Power Company and to privatize electrical power generation.

Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano declared in September that SME’s internal elections were invalid and that General Secretary Martín Esparza and other officers would not be recognized by the government. Without legally recognized officials, the union cannot engage in contract negotiations or other activities.

Last month members of a dissident group in the union, tacitly supported by the government, had also carried out an armed attack on the union hall and robbed union documents and checks.

The government justified its actions by arguing that the Light and Power Company was both inefficient and exorbitantly expensive. The SME had won higher wages and benefits for workers, though the union argues that the financial problems were caused by the government’s failure to properly invest in the company, its mismanagement, and its failure to bill both government agencies and favorite private companies—such as luxury hotels—for its services. The government said it was prepared to spend about $2 billion to pay workers severance and retirement.

PIVOTAL MOMENT

While there is little new about the government’s attack on unions and its massive use of police and military force, this is not just one more incident. This is a turning point.

The attack on the Electrical Workers Union—a union central to resisting government policies and to building labor and social movement coalitions, and located in Mexico City, the center of political opposition to the government—may well turn out to be a watershed.

As journalist Luis Hernandez Navarro wrote in the Mexico City daily La Jornada, “The police and military attack against the electrical workers represents a serious setback in the precarious democratic life of the country. It provokes a huge short circuit. It establishes an unfortunate precedent. By attempting to use violence to solve a conflict created by the government itself, it takes us back to the darkest stages of authoritarianism.”

UNION SAYS TAKEOVER A ‘DECLARATION OF WAR’

General Secretary Esparza called Calderón’s action “unconstitutional.” He called upon SME’s 65,000 active and retired members to remain calm and resist provocation. At the same time a union statement said that members would defend the nationalized electrical industry, their union, and their constitutional rights. Members gathered in front of the SME union hall and also rallied at the Monument of the Revolution in Mexico City.

A union statement issued early Sunday morning said, “They have declared war on us and we are going to respond, always exercising our Constitutional rights and guarantees, of that there is no doubt.”

Tens of thousands of workers—members of the Mexican Electrical Workers and their allies—have been rallying and marching in Mexico over the past three days. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the man who claims he actually won the 2006 presidential election, has put his movement behind the electrical workers, holding a huge rally in Mexico City on Monday. The left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) also came out in support of the union, and its representatives and senators have worn Light and Power workers uniforms to the Mexican Congress to express their solidarity.

SME leaders have called upon Mexican unions and unions of other countries to rally to their support.

The union said that with the military having occupied the power plants, it was no longer in a position to ensure the delivery of electrical power in the region.

Power outages have occurred in several Mexican neighborhoods and the Mexican media have attributed these to workers’ sabotage. The union denies it is engaged in sabotage and blames the government for the power failures.

By Dan La Botz. Labor Notes

The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) has asked for international solidarity in resisting the government liquidation of their company, the termination of the workers, and thus the destruction of the union. To protest this action, please follow this link to Labor Notes’ Solidarity Network.

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 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

The 30,000 engineering construction workforce have voted to reject the employers offer on pay and conditions in workplace individual ballots held over the past two weeks. The offer was in response to claims from the unions GMB and Unite.

Workers on seven sites have already voted for industrial action in pursuit of the claim.

 Phil Davies GMB National Secretary said “The members want more progress on the skills and unemployment registers and they want to copper-fasten the pre award audit to screen out employers who plan to undercut the agreed rates and terms and conditions. The employer’s offer of working parties on the registers is seen as jam tomorrow and the members no longer trust the employers to deliver. The members want the package to be completed now so that they can see what they are getting. The next step is to go back to the employers to see if they are up for further talks.”

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.

The figures were disclosed today as the GMB Central Executive Council (CEC) announced that it will provide an initial £10,000 to the hardship fund for GMB members on strike in Leeds since the 7th September. Leeds City Council is going ahead with plans to cut the wages of refuse workers by one third, on average from £18,000 to just £13,000 a year.

GMB’s Central Executive Council also announced that it was launching an appeal to all 3,000 GMB Branches across the UK for financial and other support. The GMB Central Executive Council made clear that it would make further announcements of supporting events over the forthcoming weeks to support the strikers and to highlight the scandal of mismanagement of Leeds City Council by the Lib Dem Tory coalition.

Paul Kenny, GMB General Secretary said, “The Lib Dem/Tory administration has failed the people of Leeds. Their negligence in not collecting nearly £17 million in unpaid council and non domestic rates heaps financial misery on the rest of the taxpayers of Leeds.

This is in stark contrast to their attacks on their own workers in the cleaning departments on whom they seek to impose huge wage cuts. It is not only rubbish which is not being collected in Leeds.

GMB’s Executive today provided £10,000 towards the hardship fund for the victimised workers and have launched a nationwide appeal to all 3,000 GMB Branches across the UK for financial and other support.

GMB CEC will also announce supporting events over the forthcoming weeks to highly the scandal of mismanagement of Leeds City Council by the Lib Dem/Tory Coalition. These are the people who want our votes to run the country when they cannot collect the taxes or the rubbish in Leeds.”

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.

Speaking after the talks break down, the union’s regional secretary, Joe MacVeigh, said, “We have tried to resolve matters peacefully and sensibly, just as our members would expect us to do. But the reality is that we have a very clear and justified set of demands, and the brigade hasn’t met them. “We were in talks until eleven o’clock last night [Monday], so no one can accuse us of pulling the trigger prematurely. We have made genuine efforts to reach agreement, but we are not prepared to settle at any price.

We have legitimate objections to a number of issues that are having, or will have, a detrimental impact on our members, such as CPD, subsistence, the drugs and alcohol policy, camp-out bases, targeted-calling, light duties and the booking of leave.

We have made it clear to the brigade that the culture of railroading stuff through with no regard for the concerns of the workforce must end. It is that approach that has driven us to take industrial action, some thing we are always very reluctant to do.

We have made ourselves available for further discussions prior to the commencement of action, but the brigade should be in no doubt that, in the absence of a reasonable offer, the action will begin soon after the announcement of the ballot result and will, I’m sure, be wholeheartedly supported by members across London members. The message from members is that enough is enough. It’s time to start fighting back.

At last week’s meeting of the union’s London regional committee, delegates voted in favour of a resolution demanding that industrial action not be suspended simply on an employers’ promise of further “talks”— a clear departure from the tactics employed by the national union leadership during the pay strikes in 2002.

The union will also send clear guidance to every member’s home address, explaining the industrial action in detail. In response to the threat of action, brigade managers are censoring all email communications from FBU officials, but the union insists this will not prevent it keeping its members informed. Members are urged to keep up to date by visiting the London FBU website at www.london.fbu.org.uk.

UNITY IS STRENGTH!

(Note: The ballot was for industrial action short of strike action.)

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.

This weekend will see a further show of the strength of the growing support for the Vestas workforce with crowds from the cancelled Big Green Gathering diverting to the Isle of Wight in what will be another important boost for the Save Vestas campaign.

Tomorrow, Saturday 1^st August, there will be a major demonstration in support of the campaign starting at 1pm from St Thomas’s Square in Newport town centre.

RMT have also congratulated Gerry Byrne who took the Vestas protest to the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square for an hour this morning between 5am and 6am.

Bob Crow, general secretary of Vestas workers’ union RMT, said:

“The fact that the Vestas campaign has held back the scheduled closure date today is another significant milestone in the fight to save the factory and 625 skilled manufacturing jobs in green energy. The extension of the consultation with the workforce this morning gives us a real chance to work up a rescue plan.

This weekend will see a major demonstration of the growing support for the Vestas campaign which has fired the imagination of the labour and environmental movements all around the world.

RMT remains deeply concerned as to the well being of those in occupation and we will be taking further legal and health advice today. This brave group of workers continue to be denied access to their basic human rights to nutritional food and liquids and we are making every effort to get supplies through.”

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).

The Vestas factory is the only unit in England manufacturing wind turbines. The Dutch company which owns it are trying to close the factory down with the loss of 625 jobs blaming the British government’s lack of commitment to renewable energy. The company is reported to have made profits of $56 million in the first quarter of this year alone – a rise of 70% on last year.

The factory has been under workers occupation since Tuesday. Communication lines into the factory have been cut and deliveries of food and water have been blockaded by private security guards. This morning, those involved in the occupation have been threatened with summary dismissal.

Bob Crow, RMT general secretary, said today:

“Nothing underlines the attack on job and communities that has been unleashed in the UK by greedy bosses and incompetent politicians better than the occupation at Vestas.

Here you have over 600 skilled workers in the only wind turbine factory in England, delivering sustainable and green energy for the future, threatened with the dole because of a row between the company and the government.

We know from workplace reports that this company is aggressively anti-union and RMT salutes the courage of those who have taken the brave decision to occupy the factory. They deserve the full support of the whole trade union movement.

There’s a simple solution to this dispute. The government should nationalise the factory, protect the jobs and show that they are walking the talk when it come to green and renewable energy.”

]]> http://solidaritymagazine.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/rmt-pledges-full-support-to-vestas-occupation/feed/ 0 solidaritymagazine