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By escalating dispute, Royal Mail has put its future at risk
• IT continues to disappoint me that employees at some point are faced with no alternative but to lose pay by taking strike action to protect their hard-earned terms and conditions of employment, which they have taken many years to secure. When they do strike, they are unfairly criticised.
Who wants to lose money by having to take part in strike action? Do people think these employees can afford to lose money at a time when the economy is suffering, or if they have young families?
These post office workers should be looking forward to having enough money so their families have a trouble-free Christmas, not spending it in the freezing cold on a picket line, just to get an employer to listen to their concerns. Unfortunately, they have no choice.
Employees from all walks of life don’t like taking industrial action. Strike action is the last resort, where the employer fails to recognise the issues of their employees and trade union representatives, and thinks it can steamroll new working conditions through, expecting employees to accept cuts in pay or reductions in the workforce.
It’s clear to me that the Royal Mail simply does not want to negotiate, and its employees can only respond by withdrawing their labour, which they have a legal right to do. If this comes as a shock to the public, then they need to remember the Tory years.
The Royal Mail’s view is that we have a massive deficit in the pension scheme. Well, then it shouldn’t have taken any holidays from the scheme, where it failed to pay the employer contributions. Now it expects employees to pay the price of this ignorance. It is the public who will end up paying this debt, as it’s a publicly-owned business.
Royal Mail and the unions had an agreement on modernisation, and any collective agreement with the trade unions is legally binding. Royal Mail should now get back to meeting the unions and get negotiations underway as a means to implement the modernisation agreement it agreed to.
Its recent action of bringing in 30,000 temporary employees to get the work done while there is a strike is illegal. The agency supplying this labour can be fined £5,000 per employee per shift. Is this public money well spent?
This will only result in an escalation of the dispute, which may destroy the Royal Mail service just like the Tories destroyed the miners. So come on Royal Mail, stop messing about, adhere to the collective agreement you made with the trade unions, and start negotiations.
Gary Doolan
Branch secretary, GMB trade union
• I WOULD like to bring to readers’ attention why union members who work for Royal Mail have been forced to take industrial action to defend our postal service.
The Communication Workers Union has an agreement with Royal Mail to work together on modernising postal services to ensure the correct amount of investment and jobs is maintained to provide the public with universal postal services.
Royal Mail would not adhere to the modernisation agreement, leaving the union with no alternative but to ballot its members to take industrial action.
The union deeply regrets having to disrupt postal services but it has been left with no alternative by an intransigent employer. The union has offered to try to settle this dispute using third-party mediation, but Royal Mail has rejected this peaceful solution.
Gary Heather
Mayton Street, N7 |
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