![[Postal workers dispute looms?]](post3.jpg)
22 Jan 2000
The Bradford & District Branch of the Communication Workers Union, which represents postmen and women in Bradford, has set itself on collision course with Royal Mail by recommending that members reject a proposed package on pay and conditions.
‘The Way Forward’, as the proposals are known, brings to a conclusion over two years of troubled negotiations between the CWU and Royal Mail about pay levels and radical changes to working practices. When Postal workers were first balloted last year they voted against the deal despite the national unions recommendation to accept.
The revised proposals, which will go to ballot next week, have been similarly endorsed by the national union. In a written statement the CWU made its position clear, "The union’s national executive, officers and senior negotiators all agree that this deal is the best that can be achieved. This is the end of the process. The choices: A better future or a further dispute with no guarantees".
However, at a special meeting at the Midland Hotel in Bradford last Sunday the local CWU branch voted to endorse a very different recommendation, urging postal workers locally to reject the deal.
At present the basic pay of a full-time postman/woman working a 41.5hr 6-day week is £201, boosted at present by night duty and Saturday attendance allowances to around £237. Under the proposed deal basic pay will rise to £242.76 for a 40hr week, but most of the allowances would go. One postman told KDIS,
"Our managers have been telling us this week that we will be almost £50 a week better off. Its rubbish. I was even told that those of us working a 6-day week would get an additional weekly allowance, I’ve now found out that our unit manager made it up!"
The desperation of Royal Mail to get the ‘Way Forward’ through lies in the importance to the business of the other elements in it, and it is these that caused most concern at the Special Bradford meeting.
"For the last ten years Royal Mail has taken on no full-time staff, preferring instead the greater flexibility of a badly paid part-time workforce performing overtime (at the same hourly rates) during busy periods. The ‘Way Forward’ is an attempt to consolidate this move towards greater flexibility, driving up productivity and performance whilst at the same time reducing costs."
A further cause of concern voiced at the special CWU meeting was one aspect of the proposed agreement that appears to limit the right of Postal Workers to take industrial action. Regarding the deployment of The Way Forward, the agreement states:,
"No executive action will be taken by Royal Mail and no industrial action will be balloted for or taken by members of CWU until the procedure has been exhausted."
Members were told that this had been sprung on local union activists by the CWU national executive and that it had caused widespread alarm. The proposed procedure would conclude with a ‘Star Chamber’ made up of two Royal Mail and two CWU representatives with an alternating chairperson. This group would rule on any disagreements and recommend a solution.
The concerns expressed at the Bradford meeting were two fold: First that when the Chair resided with Royal Mail the dice would be loaded against the employees demands. But more worryingly if the Star Chamber’s recommendation was not acceptable to the employees involved, the sanctioning of a ballot for industrial action would reside with the same two union officials who had just recommended against it. For some at the meeting this amounted to nothing less than a no strike agreement by the back door.
Postal workers will begin voting on The Way Forward next week. The outcome promises to be very interesting!
See also Communications Workers Union (CWU)
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