Another Postal Workers Union strike begins today. More disruption. More unnecessary fallout for business and domestic customers. And almost certainly, more damage to the Royal Mail and the jobs the union itself is claiming it wants to protect.
The decision of the union to strike is suicide. The union leadership behaves as if their members work for a monolithic state monopoly where competition is not permitted and alternative providers of the service do not exist. Not that that should be an excuse for strikes and unrealistic claims anyway.
Wake up people! The Royal Mail has competitors which are taking away their best customers. For nearly two years now, the monopoly on the sorting and delivery of mail has been scrapped. And whilst no competitor has yet set up an alternative system of delivering mail through people's doors, it is the case that big customers have switched to rivals of Royal Mail to handle and sort their mail before it goes on to the Royal Mail for the final mile - the delivery from the depot to the door.
And that means Royal Mail's income is under threat. Competitors can provide a better and cheaper service as they are more automated and efficient. The Royal Mail however too often survives on antiquated equipment which requires higher levels of manpower. With the position of the Royal Mail already fragile, all that strike action will do is drive more customers to the rivals, causing further job losses in Royal Mail and undermining further the viability of the company and future employment opportunities for staff.
The liberalised mail delivery market is a good thing. It is right that there should be competition and choice in who sorts the mail, even if there is no competition yet on delivery through doors. The union needs to wake up to the real world rather than conducting a display of damaging 1970s style union macho postering that is riddled with antiquated political messages.
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12 comments:
You have taken leave of your senses Jonathan.
What have the Postal workers got to lose?????? they are about to be privatised, made to accept low pay, temporary contracts, and live as so many in the UK do today IN POVERTY. They are about to be handed over to the Wolves.
You are the well off middle class Jonathan you know nothing of the above NOTHING and you and your like don`t want to know.
My party Solidarity are clear on this strike...
"Solidarity offers unconditional and unequivocal support to postal workers the length and breadth of Britain on their second day of strike action in their ongoing dispute with the Royal Mail.
Despite enjoying the overwhelming support of their members for strike action, Royal Mail senior management still refuses to enter negotiations with the CWU. This reflects the arrogance of senior and executive management that exists right across the private and public sector in this country today, a state of affairs directly linked to New Labour's commitment to the war against workers that was unleashed by Thatcher when she came to power back in 1979.
Royal Mail Chief Executive, Adam Crozier, who earns an obscene £1 million per year, a wage it would take the average postal worker 60 years to earn, is committed to the government's plans to privatise the Royal Mail. This is the real reason they have refused to negotiate. They seek confrontation with the union because their intention is to break its strength. It is the very same approach we have seen taken by senior management in the NHS, the civil service, in education - in every sphere of the public and private sector we are seeing management on salaries that are the highest in western Europe continue to try and bully and intimidate their workers into accepting wages and working conditions that are completely unacceptable in a civilised society.
We commend the CWU and their members for the principled stance they have taken in their dispute and we fully endorse their demands, which are: an above inflation pay rise with no strings; a shorter working week; no changes to the pension scheme; removal of the existing senior management at Royal Mail; no post office closures; and a return to a fully funded public service.
As in any industrial dispute, Solidarity takes the view that the CWU and their members are taking this strike action on behalf of all workers. New Labour, despite the recent change in prime minister, are determined to continue to line the pockets of the rich and in the process deepen inequality in our society to levels that haven't been seen since Victorian times.
We salute the decision of NHS workers at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh not to touch any mail during the postal workers' dispute, and we look forward to similar actions being taken in support of the postal workers the length and breadth of the country.
History has shown time and again that when the workers unite they are an unstoppable force.
We are Solidarity and we believe in taking sides."
"THE BIG SELLOUT is a political film. In various episodes the abstract phenomenon of privatisation is depicted in stories about very concrete human destinies around the globe. The documentary tells tragic, tragicomic but also encouraging stories of the everyday life of people, who day by day have to deal with the effects of privatisation politics, dictated by anonymous international financial institutions in Washington D.C. and Geneva, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
In his film, author and director FLORIAN OPITZ reveals the reality of the privatised and globalised world, which is supposed to be effective and shiny. He examines the effects of THE BIG SELLOUT, the worldwide privatisation of basic public services, such as water supply, electricity, public transportation, and even public health care. In South America, Asia, Africa, but also in Europe and the United States, OPITZ meets people, for whom these promises are nothing more than hollow phrases. And what he finds is that THE BIG SELLOUT has only just begun.
FLORIAN OPITZ talks to the architects of the new economic world order, as well as to ordinary people who have to deal with the politics of the former. He tells the story of a South African activist who helps poor families in Soweto, who are disconnected from electricity by the to-be privatised electricity supplier ESKOM, because they cannot afford to pay the high electricity bills anymore. Hunted by the Police and the company's security he and his team of guerilla electricians reconnect these families back, illegally.
Another storyline is about a Philippine mother living with her family in a slum area in Metro-Manila. For years now she has been struggling to find money to pay for the dialysis, her son needs twice a week. If she doesn't succeed until the end of the week, her son will die.
A humorous British train driver and union activist is the protagonist of the third episode. Having proudly started his career in the most efficient railway system in Europe, some years later he finds himself in a privatised, totally fragmented, and run down industry whose service regularly collapses. He is constantly fighting for his colleagues who have been facing more and more pressure from their private employers over the recent years. Pressure that has already lead to a numerous deadly accidents in the British railway system."
http://tinyurl.com/yuyyts
Taken from the SSP web site...
As Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times workers stage the first newspaper strike in Scotland in 27 years, the Scottish Socialist Party offers 100% support to all Herald group NUJ members in the battle against rapacious, anti-union bosses.
The right to be in a recognised union is at stake.
Gannett - and their representatives on planet UK, Newsquest - are practising the worst methods of Wapping in the 1980s. Threatening compulsory redundancies, then de-recognising the NUJ when members democratically vote to strike back, as a first step towards riding through the entire Herald group workforce with an axe.
Union recognition disputes are springing up across the UK - which goes to show the employers have a common interest in smashing the protective shield of union organisation, as they increasingly rely on low-paid, casualised workforces.
They have one simple driving motive - PROFIT.
http://tinyurl.com/yv8r6h
Wow, you did attract some rantings from economic illiterates!
I agree with you however, we benefit from having competition.
It enriches society. Perhaps the unions lose power, but society at large benefits from that too. Rather than sectional interests holding us to ransom ordinary people get better service.
As soon as any group, postal workers, miners or business owners get preferential treatment the rest of society suffers. Socialism and corporatism both cause more suffering than they cure. The only solution I see is liberal market capitalism.
Tristan said...
"Wow, you did attract some rantings from economic illiterates!"
After 28 years of Thaterism in Britain and the mess we are in...
"In 2005-6 3.8m children were in poverty - in homes on less than 60% of average income including housing costs."
"Figures showing a 200,000 rise in UK children living in relative poverty last year have been described as a "moral disgrace" by Barnardo's."
http://tinyurl.com/2jc3s6
Lets face it Tristan (old boy) they are the children of the working class,something you know nothing off.
I would suggest (if there`s room)you and Jonathan have a long (very long) lie down on here and try to rejoin the human race...
http://tinyurl.com/3dt9gx
Jonathan and Tristan in la la land...
"The Bank of England must act decisively and swiftly to curb the current house price madness"...
http://tinyurl.com/3bd7co
PFI: a get-rich-quick scheme?...
"Naive public officials were taken to the cleaners" (there not talking about you are they Jonathan?...
http://tinyurl.com/2teh2a
"TUC warns the American dream is UK workers nightmare"...
http://tinyurl.com/yt6pub
Careful what you say Jonathan/Tristan we may well be coming back to this in a short while,after all you don`t want people to think your both "economic illiterates!" time will tell...
"This is a scenario for a downward, self-perpetuating spiral into a slump of potentially massive proportions."...
http://tinyurl.com/294hy5
"The Minnesota bridge collapse: One more indictment of the profit system"...
http://tinyurl.com/2nacvo
Tristan said...
"The only solution I see is liberal market capitalism."
And he calls me "economic illiterates!"
You couldn` make it up.
"Are these the world's costliest roadworks? The M6 widening - at £1,000 an inch"...
http://tinyurl.com/2torum
Jonathan how many people where kill due to "liberal market capitalism"...
http://tinyurl.com/yschwc
"End the great wealth robbery!"
"The race to the bottom in workers’ wages and conditions is gathering pace. Aer Lingus management have declared war on its workforce, as they shift operations from Shannon to Belfast in an attempt to drive down wages and impose poorer working conditions. If they get away with it then the jobs, wages and working conditions of all Aer Lingus staff will be under threat. It's happening across all sectors of the economy and in particular in the construction industry."
"In otherwords, for the majority of working class people all of their debts are based on the value of their homes and property prices are falling. In some areas the prices are falling dramatically – go on to the internet and check out the asking prices for houses all over the country and you will find in some areas prices have fallen by up to 30%, and it is common now in Dublin for the asking price of a house to be €50,000 less than it was at the start of this year."
http://www.socialistparty.net/
Most of us know about the first paragraph in the above and the affects on the working class here in the UK let alone Ireland. The second paragraph is off particular interest, house prices falling by that much in Ireland, that indicates that the UK will soon follow suit. As we go more and more into a low-wage economy (like every other western country) it follows that prices will have to fall, a realignment. Of course it will be the turn of the middle classes next, indeed that has already started for some of them. We were sold globalisation on the premise that it would bring the poor of the world upto our standards, right round the world, the truth is it has brought many of us down to the poor of the world standards, the very reverse. It has made a few VERY rich at the expence of the many. Thatchers dream.
http://tinyurl.com/2e9wgd
http://tinyurl.com/25ywdy
"The Israeli Mail Authority began to be privatised almost a year ago"...
http://tinyurl.com/2tf3mq
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