Postal workers under the axe

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Postal workers have seen over recent: months the spectacle of the Tory hatchet-men whetting their axe for a bloody attack on the Post Office.

Carefully cultivated witch-hunts in the mass media have formed a necessary part of the Tories' preparations to cut state spending massively in this sector.

Already plans have been announced to split the corporation in two, and sell off to private capital highly lucrative sections of the telecommunications side.

At the same time, in a piece of legalistic chicanery, the postal service in London has been referred to the Monopolies Commission.

Of course it is perfectly obvious to even the most humble domestic user of the postal service that there are increasing delays in delivery, especially in the London area.

But contrary to the indignant cries of the bourgeois press, these are not caused by card-playing postal workers with bulging pay packets.

Entangled in lengthy process of mechanisation, the postal service is still chronically short of staff in most areas.

The reasons are not hard to find: primitive working conditions for repetitious drudgery: a barbaric shift system which effectively excludes mothers of young children; and poor pay to clinch the bargain.

The Post Office only continues to function at all because of the massive hours of overtime worked by most employees desperate to take home a living wage.

Behind this situation of mass exploitation, Tom Jackson and the UPW leadership continue their lona careers of capitulation and betrayal.

The UPW executive's response. to the new Tory attacks carries on 'this sordid tradition.

Piqued by acc usations of incompetence even Post Office management has been more militant in resisting the government's threats.

'Determination' to oppose the splitting of the corporation nas already produced its tirst fruits in the second round of the 1979 wage bargaining.

Accepted

The management offer recommended by the executive proposed separate review dates for the postal side and the telecommunications side.

This effectively accepted the split, and drove a wedge into any possible solidarity from the whole union in wages struggles.

For postal workers, the offer came in two parts: 1) a measly 32% compensation for shifting the review date from January 1 to April 1; 2) a 7% increase in the basic rate, dependent on an 'efficiency' agreement.

Despite the massive rejection of the scandalous offer recommended by the executive earlier in the year, this separate offer was accepted by an overwhelming majority in the branch ballot.

Astonished to find that the promised second round of wage bargaining had actually materialised, UPW members were tempted by the prospect of much-needed cash in hand to look on the brighter side of the 'efficiency' agreement, as the Jackson COHSE NEC VES union bureaucracy urged to.

The agreement is a masterpiece of calculated vagueness and deliberate unclarity.

Happy With no mention of defending their members' jobs and conditions, the UPW executive happily agree to promote the 'efficiency' of 'the Post Office' Specific details are supposedly to be ratified by a special conference next year.

But postal workers already know what measures management are seeking to carry through-the re-introduction of part-time staff, and industrial engineering to discover the best means of reducing staff and introducing speed-up.

The Tories' threats to embark on the risky project of de-nationalising sections of the postal service are at present mainly designed to cow the UPW into accepting a huge loss of jobs and drastic worsening of conditions.

There will certainly be a mass response from UPW members as soon as the Tories' plans become obvious.

But there will be no possibility of resisting these attacks under the present union leadership.

Replace

Jackson and his fellows will not fight one millimetre of the way forward against the Tory attacks: they must be replaced by an alternative, revolutionary leadership in the UPW to defend and improve every aspect of the interests of postal workers.

As employers step up the drive for rationalisation and redundancies in industry each week provides new evidence of the inability of union leaders to defend jobs.

At the threatened Robb Caledon shipyard in Dundee, where workers have imposed sanctions that prevent the launching of four ships until they get a guarantee of continued work at the yard, Confed leaders have made an unsuccessful attempt to get the action called off.

Boilermakers' leader John Chalmers, with tortured logic, argued that the action "weakened the workers' case for. keeping the yard open"

But convenor. Bob Barty rejected such mumbo jumbo, and refused to consider a reduction in the size of the workforce:

«We do not talk of redundancy here, either voluntary or any other kind. It is a dirty word."

String pulling

Unfortunately it is not such a dirty word for union officials in the North East, whose year-long campaign of string-pulling to keep open Vickers' Scotswood plant at Newcastle-upon. Tyne has resulted in dismal failure.

Not only is the plant to close, but the year's "campaign" has seen 700 jobs already whittled away at the plant, without a finger lifted in opposition.

A central feature of this wretched "campaign" has been an effort to persuade industrialists to take over the plant.

In place of such grovelling, the task in defending threatened jobs must be, as in Robb Caledon, to take action that denies the employer his property and profit-through strike action, blacking and accupation -while calling on the labour movement as a whole for supporting action.

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PHOTO: John Sturock, Report UNION