letter sent to West Lothian courier regarding postal workers strike

24th October, 2009

Dear Sir

Re: Postal dispute

Postal workers and management by their own admission both accept that Royal Mail needs to be ‘modernised’. Why then are they currently locked in a dispute which has resulted in nationwide industrial action that is inconveniencing businesses and the public in general?

The reason is each side in the dispute has a very different interpretation of what constitutes ‘modernisation’. On the one hand, management view modernisation as a process of continuing development towards greater efficiency to be measured in terms of profitability. On the other hand, postal workers look upon modernisation as a series of changes necessary to provide postal services that meet the needs of the public more effectively.

Royal Mail is a labour-intensive organisation and consequently for the management’s view of modernisation to prevail it has been necessary to lay off thousands of workers, change work practices, raise postage charges, cancel second deliveries and do away with Sunday collections in order to cut costs, improve profitability and prepare the way for eventual privatisation. Inevitably these on-going actions have led to conflict with the postal workers who believe the Royal Mail’s universal service obligation can only be achieved if it remains in the public sector and that fragmenting the business to allow private investors opportunities to make profits is not in the public interest.

Unfortunately for the postal workers they are not only at variance with management but are up against the political establishment as well. The Labour Government remain determined to part-privatise the Royal Mail and are supported in this by both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, the latter wanting to go still further and sell off Royal Mail lock, stock and barrel.

Royal Mail privatisation has become a non-negotiable issue in the current political climate in which public services are considered to be more effectively run by private companies rather than public sector organisations even though there is little or no evidence to support such a contention. On the contrary, there is ample evidence, not least from the case of postal services both in Britain and abroad, to show that when the private sector takes over from the public sector the level of service tends to deteriorate at the same time as charges rise.

Although the odds are stacked against them, postal workers can take heart that by and large the public share their misgivings of a privatised postal service that would put profits before people.