Interest in rank-and-file fightback at Royal Mail: Belfast, London, West Yorkshire
“Managers are manipulative, intimidating and specifically target new starters who might feel their job is at risk.”
The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee is organising workers against Royal Mail’s attacks, for the defence of terms and conditions, an end to all job cuts and to defeat victimisations. We are opposed to the Communication Workers Union bureaucracy, which acts as Royal Mail’s partner. Information on the committee can be found here. We are affiliated to the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).
The next meeting of the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee will take place on Sunday April 28, 2024, at 7pm. This meeting will discuss the committee’s response to Royal Mail’s frontal assault on the USO including plans to destroy a further 17,800 jobs. Once again, the Communication Workers Union is on its knees offering its own proposals to reduce the USO based on full acceptance of the shift to a parcels-led business in defence of shareholder profit. These plans must be met by a rank-and-file fightback.
“Managers are manipulative, intimidating and specifically target new starters who might feel their job is at risk.”
Better than expected profits are the result of a $3 billion cost cutting plan that will reduce UPS’s “dependency on labor”
Royal Mail has a set of capabilities for spying on its employees that would be the envy (or at least equal) of any secret police force in the world. Rather than oppose this, the Communication Workers Union appears fully on board.
The event ws a major effort to promote the union apparatus, which functions as a central pillar of class rule.
It is an obscenity that the livelihoods of fighters for the working class are threatened. Those who should face the axe are the pro-company bureaucracy responsible for the betrayal of those they were meant to represent.
The WSWS is publishing an appeal to the rank-and-file from a victimised Communication Workers Union rep responding to the rigged outcome of the review of mass victimisations during the year long dispute at Royal Mail.
With all terms of reference agreed behind closed doors by Royal Mail, the CWU and Falconer, the review was only “independent” from union members who were denied any say on the matter.
Since July 2022, more than 400 union reps and postal workers have been sacked or suspended in the largest number of victimisations since the 1984-85 miners’ strike.
Royal Mail workers in the Wirral spoke out in defence of their sacked colleagues. One postie said, “I think people who got sacked were targeted. They’ve not gone after everyone. They are picking out people who are going against the grain.”
“My husband was dismissed in June for totally made-up charges by his bosses. He had over 31 years’ service and an unblemished record.”
The sackings at Prenton are a direct outcome of the national agreement between the Communication Workers’ Union and Royal Mail which includes the use of PDA data for performance management.
Any discussion of the way forward must involve a review of the essential lessons of the year-long dispute.
The dispute’s outcome has exposed the lie peddled by “activist” groups such as Postal Workers Say Vote No that the CWU leadership could be pressured to reverse their rotten agreement with the company.
Dave Ward’s depiction of the ballot as an exercise in democracy is a travesty. The CWU bureaucracy waged a vicious and targeted campaign against all those advocating a No vote.
“Ward and his overpaid sidekicks are throwing away rights won by previous generations. Their names will live on in ignominy.”
On August 27, Lehman hosted an online Q and A, explaining his campaign’s perspective of building a rank-and-file movement and uniting workers internationally.
In this the founding statement of the Committee, which was founded in a meeting held last weekend, rank-and-file UPS workers call for workers to “to organize ourselves—not to 'support' the bargaining committee and to cheerlead for them, but to enforce our democratic will, and position ourselves to countermand the inevitable sellout.”
Dana workers across the US noticed as March 31, the date by which Appendix P of the contract says Dana must pay “profit sharing,” passed without workers receiving much needed income. We, the rank-and-file, are demanding answers as to why we did not get paid.
The second online public meeting of the Postal Action Committee unanimously passed a resolution that begins with the words, “The second ballot was one big scam to push through cuts in real wages.”
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