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Post workers are fighting for more than their jobs
Post Office management is not badly affected, but communities lose out and suffer hardship when a branch post office closes, argues Miranda Dunn
WE might live in the computer age but the importance of an ordinary letter for an individual or a small business cannot be underestimated.
I believe that Dave Ward is correct and that the Communication Workers Union is defending the future of the Post Office as a public service.
The loss of local post offices affects far more people than its workers.
Local economies within Camden and Barnet where we lost local post offices have suffered hardship.
The removal of a small post office does not hit supermarkets. It does not hit large businesses. For Post Office management like Adam Crozier and Melanie Caufield to argue that individual post offices are not profitable enough to make economic sense is to fail to see the relationship between these post offices and their local economy.
Cabinet minister Alan Johnson suggested the partial privatisation of the Post Office when he came to power.
Billy Hays, general secretary of the CWU, pointed out at the time that this was “a breach of the Labour Manifesto, and a spin too far and too fast”.
Adam Crozier has been attacking the CWU for so-called ‘Spanish practices’. This is spinning a bizarre fabrication of the truth.
It is the management appointed by New Labour that wants to cut up the Post Office and Royal Mail and privatise the service.
The CWU is defending its workers from attempts by Mr Crozier to undermine jobs, and dismantle skills and knowledge by isolating areas of expertise and undermining the confidence of workers.
Established procedures to make their walks practical are not ‘Spanish’ practices or laziness on the part of posties.
Mr Crozier, or rather, the asset strippers he fronts, are cutting up the business piecemeal into less functional but saleable components.
Mr Crozier and his managers are doing this through taking away responsibilities from Post Office counter staff and posties and cutting up well-organised systems, and established rounds.
Alan Johnson’s suggestion that the government’s controlling 51 per cent share of the Post Office should be sold to its workers then becomes a magic trick of ‘Now you see where the capital has been transferred to. Now you don’t’ – as profit-making parts of the business such as Parcel Force would be privatised and sold off during the magic act – destroying the service.
The loss of the local post offices hits small shopkeepers, and community spirit.
Years on from the closures we have lost local shops from our high streets. Businesses like independent book shops have been forced out of business and pensioners have to travel much further and queue for longer.
The Post Office counter staff who provided the excellent service in Finchley Central, were transferred to other branches. They are now threatened with lower pay and fewer rights. These are the people the CWU is defending.
The closure of local offices and the transfer of local pensions and child benefit and unemployment benefit from the Post Office accounts, into an American multinational, although still dispensed by the Post Office counters or via bank accounts, imposed by Mr Crozier have taken capital out of the local community.
This capital is being spent in large shopping centres and in supermarkets. The loss of the small shops from our community, owing to this transfer of capital from the local community, has undermined our community’s quality of life. The loss of small individual shops through loss of turnover is heartbreaking. Capital built up by the community over generations leaks elsewhere.
We must stand up for the CWU because a post office provides social glue and capital which supports small businesses and individuality.
The workers represent those who rely upon the post office as well as themselves in this strike.
Mr Crozier has no interest in anything other than creaming off the capital from the privatisation of our Post Office and the Royal Mail.
This is being carried out under the noses of ordinary people.
To pretend the changes he is undertaking are in the interests of modernisation is to pretend that privatisation benefits society. Privatisation benefits fat cats, and those who support them.
The CWU members are protecting the interests of wider society when they stand up to save a public service.
Mr Johnson, a former postie himself, put the writing on the wall – when he admitted New Labour wants partially to privatise the Post Office and Royal Mail.
Dave Ward and the CWU are fighting for their workers’ rights. The CWU is fighting to save our Post Office.
I believe the Post Office and the Royal Mail are public services which protect democracy and open government as well as promoting small businesses and local communities.
I support the CWU and its campaign to stop the dismantling and piecemeal sale of an institution which made Britain – our Post Office.
* Miranda Dunn is Green Party GLA candidate for Barnet and Camden
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