The Socialist 11 August 2005

Defend democratic rights

Trade unions must mobilise against terrorism, racism and war

Dewsbury: Uniting and organising against racism

60 years after Hiroshima: Nuclear proliferation makes socialist change more urgent

Justice for Heathrow's Gate Gourmet workers

No hospital closures

Journalists on all-out strike

Firefighters defend life-saving services

Royal Mail announce redundancies

Northern Ireland after the IRA statement: Why the 'peace process' continues to flounder

Greek workers resist neo-liberal attacks

Union split reflects crisis in US labour

Previous issues, etc

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Royal Mail announce redundancies

THE ANNOUNCEMENT this week that Royal Mail intends to get rid of another 30,000 jobs is depressingly familiar. This is on top of the 53,000 redundancies since 2000.

A postal worker

It seems that Allen Leighton is blaming this on Postcomm, the postal regulators, who disagree with Royal Mail's plan to increase the price of a first-class stamp from 30p to 48p. They believe that the increase should only be to 34p. Last month Leighton warned that this could result in up to 40,000 jobs going.

Postcomm hired a consultancy, LEGC, to look into Royal Mail's operations. Among other things they propose is a pay reduction - they say Royal Mail should start comparing staff pay to the private sector, rather than the public sector.

The initial response by our union, CWU, is that speculation about further job cuts was "extremely unsettling" for postal workers, and that members had worked hard to turn the company around in recent years.

The attacks on Royal Mail workers are part of the New Labour government's neo liberal attacks - rather than going along with "share in success" and other brown-nosing schemes, the CWU should be fighting these attacks on postal workers' pay and conditions.