Year: 2003

With days to go before we know if 160,000 Royal Mail workers have voted for the first national postal strike since the one that was led by the now Labour Education Minister, Alan Johnson, in 1996. Most seasoned observers have little doubt as to the outcome. Martin O’Neill, chairman of the commons Trade and Industry Select Committee, says: ‘I think they will get a stonking majority for strike action.’

A strike would be very difficult for Royal Mail, which is now in the second year of a three-year plan initiated by chairman Allan Leighton. This involves cost-cutting and 30,000 redundancies to turn around the group’s pounds 1.1 billion loss in the year to March 2002. Officials insist there is no room for brinkmanship, despite last week’s appeal to the workforce by Leighton and chief executive Adam Crozier to accept their 14.5 per cent productivity-related pay offer – raising pay to pounds 300 a week – or risk ‘commercial suicide’.

Postal union leaders are developing plans for a series of short, sharp, targeted stoppages in mail deliveries if their members vote for strike action in the pay dispute with the Royal Mail.

The Communication Workers’ Union leadership wants to maximise the impact of strike action while minimising the potential for long-term damage to their members and RM itself.

The new chief executive of Royal Mail, Adam Crozier, has quietly removed three of the postal group’s most senior executives. Their departures, after they recently gave up some of their employment rights and signed new contracts, could lead to an embarrassing legal row.

Jerry Cope, Kevin Williams and Mick Linsell have all resigned.

The removal of the three directors could lead to legal action. Under reforms pushed through by the Royal Mail chairman, Allan Leighton, last year, all three signed new contracts that restricted their pay-offs to one year in the event of their departure and stopped them taking early retirement, by saying they could not draw on their pensions until they were 60.

It is understood that they have been advised that, because of the short time between them signing the new contracts and their ousting, they may have a claim against Royal Mail for bad faith.