Stop Mandelson, Stop Crozier

Pete Keenlyside, Postal Executive Council Report January 2009

Keep the Post Public Campaign

The National Briefing on 15 January gave Reps the outline of what the campaign to stop Peter Mandelson pushing the recommendations in the Hooper Report through Parliament will look like. As well as giving details of the policies we will be pursuing, the meeting heard what the shape of the campaign would look like. The reality is that we have probably 6 weeks to 2 months to run it before Mandelson tries to ram his proposals through.

The first phase involves getting MP’s, especially Labour ones, to sign Early Day Motion 428, which contains our position. At the time of writing, this had 113 signatures. Every Branch should now have a list of MP’s in their area and should be contacting those who have yet to sign to ask why not. Letters should also be handed to members to send to their own MP. The more they get, the more notice they are likely to take.

Alongside this, we need to make contact with other organisations that may support us. At national level, our arguments have been raised at the Labour Party National Executive and all the other major Unions have signed a joint statement supporting us. We have even written to the Federation of Small Businesses, the Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of Sub Postmasters. Branches will need to start making contacts with other bodies in their area. This could be Constituency Labour Parties, trades councils or other trade union branches but could also be campaigning organisations and even bodies such as women’s institutes. As a minimum we should be sending them model motions, requests to speak at their next meeting and an information pack. HQ have promised to provide this by 30 January but there is already a wealth of material out in the Regions and if it doesn’t arrive in time, don’t wait, use your own stuff.

The next phase will involve our public campaign. A Nationally Rally and lobby of Parliament is being arranged for 24 February. A National Demonstration is planned for 14 March in Wolverhampton in the constituency of Pat McFadden, the minister in charge of the Post Office. Lobbies of the Regional Parliaments/Assemblies are also being organised. In the meantime, Branches will need to consider how they can get our case out to the public. Again, HQ have promised to produce leaflets, postcards, balloons and petitions but again, don’t wait. If the Regions have produced their own stuff, go ahead and use that. The constituencies of MP’s refusing to sign the EDM should be especially targeted with lobbies of their advice surgeries and stalls in local shopping centres. Football matches in particular are good places to get a lot of signatures very quickly.

But it’s not just the Government that we’ve got to stop. Royal Mail management are on a mission to kill the business and we’ve got to put the block on them before they succeed. To do this we need to force management to deal with the CWU as an equal partner and to get a National Agreement dealing with the whole issue of “modernisation”. Dave Ward wrote to Adam Crozier on 9 January calling for an urgent industrial relations summit between the leadership of Royal Mail and the CWU. The reply, sent on 15 January, was not helpful. Crozier continues to blame us for the failure of the business to move forward and insultingly offers to help us “modernise” ourselves. He also repeats the view held by the Hooper Report that our only role should be in helping management carry out their plans. As long as Royal Mail fail to recognise that the CWU have an absolute right to negotiate around our legitimate, alternative policies then we have no alternative than to keep our block on all unagreed changes, be they new machinery or Unit business plans.

National Officer Bob Gibson presented a document titled the “CWU Delivery Blueprint – Foundations for a New Delivery Model” to the last meeting of the Postal Executive. This is part of our attempt to provide an alternative to Royal Mail’s plan to run the business and the service down. The areas the document covered are automation, earnings and reward, including the shorter working week, working safely, delivery methods and duty structures, door to door, callers’ offices and CWU involvement. Key to achieving a new delivery model is reaching a national agreement with the business. Without this they will carry on with their slash and burn agenda until there is little or nothing left to save. That’s why it’s vital that no agreement is given to their latest round of business plan cuts at local level.

Bob’s document was presented to Divisional Reps last week and is now going to Area and Unit Reps for them to look at. The document is not intended to be the last word and any suggestions for alterations or additions will be welcome. The intention is to put a final document to the Postal Executive in the near future and then to use this in both our discussions with management and our campaign with the public.

Walk Sequencing

According to the Reps at Jubilee Mail Centre, the new ILSM doesn’t quite do what it says on the tin. They were due to start testing with live mail at the beginning of January, but this has now been put back to June. Apparently, there’s been a lot of  travelling back and forwards to France to try and sort out the problems but the machine still hasn’t come up to the level where the business can accept this. The original programme was to start rolling the machines out in September, so, presumably, this will now have to be put back.

We have not met management to discuss this issue for some months now and they are still refusing to discuss drawing up national guidelines for the introduction of the machines. On that basis we are still advising Reps to have nothing to do with it at a local level. They have offered to meet with us again but no firm dates have been pencilled in yet. At the moment, however, it’s unlikely that this will lead to anything positive.

Vehicle Telemetry

Despite the progress made earlier last year, when we agreed a joint statement on the introduction of telemetry and the process for drivers’ risk assessment, there are still a number of issues yet to be resolved. We still have no agreement on how the information generated by the equipment will be used on an individual basis and on who will speak to drivers if it’s shown that their performance is not up to scratch. We have been arguing for driver coaches. We have also yet to agree a new traffic accident procedure or a procedure for the issue of Dallas keys. The timescale for issuing these has, in any case, been put back with no firm date given. We are pushing management for further meetings to try and resolve these but at the moment nothing has been arranged.

In the meantime, it’s obvious that some local managers are trying to do their own thing with the equipment. We have heard of instances where they have tried to use the Conduct Code solely on the information supplied by telemetry. This is strictly against the provisions of the joint statement and is not acceptable. They have also tried to use the information in revisions. This is a bit like Pegasus. If you can’t trust the information going in, how can you have any faith in what comes out? Any proposals that come on the basis of telemetry should be treated with a pinch of salt.

Conduct Code

Over the past year a number of meetings have been held with the business to discuss what the term “updating and modernising” the Conduct Code. We have now received a draft of the changes they would like to make and it’s clear that some of them go way beyond simple changes in text. The major problem is in the role of the Reps where the automatic right of members to be represented at all formal hearings appears to have been watered down, as has the right of Reps to answer questions on their member’s behalf. The proposed changes are now going to the CWU Conduct Review Group for their comments but the Postal Executive will make any final decision on changes.

Some 15 months after they were suspended and nearly nine months after they were dismissed, the National Appeals Panel confirmed the dismissal of the Burslem Reps, Dave Scarratt and Mark Lewis and gave a penalty of suspended dismissal to Jason Cornwall, the Unit H&S Rep. The decision of the Panel, contained in a 166 page report, was by a 2 to 1 majority and the CWU representative on the Panel has submitted his own 30 page minority report on why he thinks they’ve got it wrong. Despite all this time and over 3000 pages of evidence, nothing has changed my view that all they were guilty of was being effective Reps and that the whole affair was simply an attack on the Union. This is not the end of the affair and the cases of the two who were sacked will now go to a tribunal.

A Royal Mail appeals manager will now hear the cases of the three non-Reps who were also sacked. What chance they will have of justice from him remains anyone’s guess. Needless to say, all those involved still enjoy the full support of the Union nationally.

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