Strike to stop Royal Mail sell-off

Gary Clark, Assistant branch secretary, Scotland No.2 branch CWU

Communication Workers Union, CWU, lobby of parliament over the privatisation of Royal Mail postal services Feb 09, photo Paul Mattsson

CWU members in Royal Mail are meeting on 31 July and 1 August to discuss defending the service against privatisation.

In a recent consultative ballot there was a 96% vote against the government's plans to float Royal Mail on the stockmarket within nine months.

The CWU has announced that it will have no choice but to proceed with an industrial action ballot if it can't get a watertight national agreement on protection of its existing national agreements.

We should go further than this. No matter what the law says we should take industrial action against privatisation.

As the law stands just now you can only take action if there is a trade dispute and the question of who owns the company would not be seen as a legitimate trade dispute under the current anti-trade union legislation.

But we should make it clear we will be fighting privatisation by any means necessary, up to and including strike action.

Our fight cannot be taken in isolation from the pay talks and other talks around pensions as well as the future of Royal Mail.

The union proposed a two-year deal which was followed up with a counter proposal of a three-year deal by the management.

This is because they want to clear up all issues and have a period of settling-in for a newly privatised service without any major industrial relation issues. We should oppose any pay deals longer than two years.

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