Renationalise mail distribution

Save the jobs of City Link workers

City Link workers and fellow trade unionists protesting outside the bankrupt company's headquarters on New Year's Day 2015, photo Coventry SP

City Link workers and fellow trade unionists protesting outside the bankrupt company’s headquarters on New Year’s Day 2015, photo Coventry SP   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Rob Williams, National Shop Stewards Network chair

Over 3,000 City Link workers are now facing the New Year dole queue with the company put into administration.

Because the firm is bankrupt, the 2,400 directly employed workers will only receive statutory payments of a maximum of nearly £14,000 for decades of service, with most getting far less.

But City Link’s 1,000 “self-employed” contractors will get no redundancy pay at all and become “unsecured” creditors of what is likely to be a bankrupt company.

This comes a year after the privatisation of Royal Mail and is further proof of how the postal and delivery sector is becoming ever more dog eat dog, with bosses trying to push down workers’ wages and terms and conditions, and increasing zero-hour contracts and subcontracting.

The National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) supports the call of RMT union general secretary Mick Cash for City Link to be nationalised to save these jobs – as also does the Socialist Party.

Public interest

Mick Cash told the BBC: “If the government can nationalise the bankers then they can nationalise City Link, which is clearly in the public interest.”

This call should be linked to the trade unions demanding the renationalisation of Royal Mail – where universal national equality of prices and service is now under threat on the altar of profits – and the rest of the companies in this sector.

A nationalised distribution service, run under democratic control, could provide both a unified delivery system and decent wages and conditions for its staff.

This demand can unite workers, both directly and indirectly employed, across the industry and cut across the bosses’ divide and rule tactics.

Scandalously, the Labour Party ruled out renationalising Royal Mail despite this being unanimously supported at last year’s Labour Party conference.

The whole of the trade union movement should support these workers and any action they take. In 2009, 600 sacked workers at bankrupt Visteon occupied their plants, and while not able to keep their jobs, they won enhanced redundancy payments.

CWU members have just been on strike against job losses and the threat of compulsory redundancies for workers handling, collecting and distributing cash across the Post Office network.

Solidarity to the City Link workers!


Outraged workers demonstrate

Nuneaton RMT Branch Secretary and Socialist Party member Paul Reilly at the City Link protest, 01.01.15

Nuneaton RMT Branch Secretary and Socialist Party member Paul Reilly at the City Link protest, 01.01.15   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Coventry Socialist Party

“Nationalise City Link, put the bosses in the clink!” shouted dozens of protesters outside the haulage company’s headquarters on New Year’s Day.

RMT members, Socialist Party activists, TUSC supporters and City Link workers from Coventry and across Britain joined the demonstration, including a group from Scotland.

One of them, Mick, worked at City Link with his son and daughter. All three now face redundancy.

“Management spoke to us two weeks before Christmas and said everything was fine and the rumours about the business were untrue,” he said. “Then they wished us a happy Christmas and New Year. They just kept lying to us.”

When asked what he thought City Link workers should do now, his answer was clear: “Fight. What else can we do? Either we fight, or we lay down and die.”

Many workers are being told they won’t be paid for any overtime worked in the weeks before Christmas – some were working 12-hour days, seven days a week! Not only are these workers threatened with redundancy, their bosses are refusing to pay them!

The books should be opened and investigated by City Link workers and trade unions, to see where the money has gone.

  • On 2 January, 15 workers burnt their City Link uniforms in a protest outside the firm’s Rotherham depot

“Bosses seem to have planned for this for weeks before telling workers. The company appears to have been meeting with insolvency advisors since November, and on 9 December three current City Link directors established a new firm – City Link B2B. This has led the transport union, RMT, to claim these directors could be preparing to buy back assets from administrators ‘at a knockdown price’.”

Dave Nellist, former Coventry MP and Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition chair