Lost in the post
THE LAST Conservative Government’s greatest achievement was pushing through the trade union reforms which solved the worst of this country’s chronic industrial relations problems. But there remain a few isolated pockets where militants look back with nostalgia to the days when Britain was the Sick Man of Europe. Some leaders of the RMT union representing workers on the Tube and suburban train routes see the 1970s as a Golden age. Another throwback, as we report in our news pages today, is the Communications Workers Union, which seems to imagine it operates in the earlier era of Peter Sellers’ I’m All Right Jack. When not on an official strike, such as the one that crippled postal deliveries throughout large parts of the country earlier this summer, they are involved in increasing numbers of wildcat stoppages. Unofficial strikes in the Royal Mail resulted in 62,000 working days lost in the last 12 months – one of the worst years on record. It has been a long time since sending a letter First class guaranteed delivery the next day. As we show today, the CWU in London has the most intransigent Post Office workforce in the country. A Way Forward deal for more flexibility in working practices was negotiated by the union and management earlier this year; it has been accepted by half the delivery offices nationwide, but by only two out of 100 offices in London. The kind of Spanish practices that disappeared a generation ago in most industries are still rife in the Post Office – ‘phantom overtime’ schemes, early knocking-off times, which mean that golf courses in London and the South-East are disproportionately full of post-office workers, and a wide range of institutionalised extended tea breaks. Though the Government has not privatised the Post Office, newly christened Consignia, The Royal Mail has lost its centuries-old monopoly. For the first time it has been exposed to local and foreign competition and is under urgent pressure to modernise. If it fails, the biggest losers will be post office workers, who will have nobody to blame but their union bosses for leading them down a blind alley towards the past.
