UK Royal Mail managers to ignore monitoring orders

Royal Mail managers have been advised to disobey orders to spy on striking postal workers after lawyers warned clandestine surveillance during industrial disputes may be unlawful. Guidance issued to middle-ranking and senior executives by union leaders urges managers to ignore controversial instructions to covertly monitor pickets. Amicus issued a revised 38-point code for white-collar staff following the Guardian’s disclosure of confidential Royal Mail plans to secretly film strikers with managers being asked to buy disposable cameras to photograph branch officials. Under updated Amicus guidelines for managers during disputes involving sorting and delivery workers executives are also advised not to volunteer to do the jobs of strikers. Peter Skyte, national secretary of Amicus’s communication managers association section, said: “The way in which managers were called upon to spy on postal workers in the dispute last year is completely unacceptable. Royal Mail has to change its industrial relations from a collection of 1970s car factories run by 1970s-style civil servants and work with the unions to resolve serious conflict.” The disclosure last November of secret surveillance during widespread unofficial walkouts centered in London provoked a political outcry. A Royal Mail spokesman said: “We were simply saying that on Royal Mail premises managers have a right to manage. We never accepted that we were asking people to snoop or take part in some underhand surveillance.”