At dozens of depots in the capital and around the country, some 20,000 members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) took unofficial strike action to protest the moves by the Royal Mail company to undermine their hard-won working conditions. The strikes, which lasted for two weeks and shut down mail service across the country, ended November 3 after the union agreed to an offer from Royal Mail. The job actions were not endorsed by national union officials, who pinned responsibility for the dispute on the employers.

The bosses’ attempts to get workers to do struck work only increased the unionists’ resolve. Areas hit by the strikes included Coventry, Portsmouth, Swindon, Stoke-on-Trent, and Colchester.

In response, Royal Mail officials threatened to take legal action against the union. As deliveries ceased, the company began to seal up mailboxes in London.

At the Southall depot, the bosses sparked the strike by suspending collection drivers who refused to do the work of mail delivery workers who had walked off the job. “This isn’t our job: we drive vans and do collections,” explained postal worker Richard Pugh to the November 2 Guardian. When struck work from Southall was moved to nearby Greenford, Michele Laidlow refused to do it, walking out in the face of the bosses’ intransigence. She was rapidly joined by 800 of the 950 workers at the depot. Militant reporters visited the Greenford picket on November 2, where workers had constructed a camp and erected a Christmas tree to let the bosses know that they are prepared to see the dispute through to the end.

At the Mount Pleasant depot picket line, mail sorter and acting union branch secretary Roger Charles told the Militant, “Last Monday the bosses told us to do work that had been taken from the Willesdon depot, where there was strike action. We told them not to ask us to do this but they ignored the request.” The walkout began on the night shift. “We organized a mass meeting mid-shift,” Charles said.

The bosses have been insisting on a new contract that “overturns some of the conditions that we have won,” he said. “For example, here the company has to hire a number of temporary workers to cover holidays, which allows us to organize leave allocation so that workers get a certain amount of choice over when holidays are taken, based on our seniority. Now they want to do away with that,” he said. The effect would be disruptive, to say the least. “If you get allocated holiday in July this year you might not get July again for another seven years.”

Workers said that the bosses also aim to eliminate breaks between regular shifts and overtime.

These attacks have been accompanied by an assault on workers’ self-respect. One Mount Pleasant worker quoted in the Guardian said, “They will tell you when to go to the toilet and they will talk to you with raised voices and in a generally abusive manner.”

Charles explained that “London weighting”—extra pay that the union has won in partial compensation for the higher cost of living in the capital—remains a live issue. Earlier this year the CWU organized two days’ strike action to demand an increase in this payment. “I take home on average £230 for a five day week,” said the unionist. “But like many others here I work seven days a week just in order to make ends meet.”

Ben Copeland agreed. “About 70 percent of the workforce here has to rely on overtime for a living wage,” he said.

The workers described the support given by firefighters stationed across the road from the depot. The Fire Brigades Union members, who themselves engaged in national strike action earlier this year, offered the use of their canteen facilities to the postal workers.

Charles described the employers’ pugnacious attitude toward the union. “On the first day of the strike one boss claimed that I was intimidating workers to join the strike,” he said. “They have been following me around with a notebook.” On November 1, the Guardian published excerpts of a Royal Mail document outlining the bosses’ spying and harassment operation against the union. The document instructs managers to “make a note of the (union) reps’ movements, noting who they speak to immediately after leaving managers office.” In addition, it says, they should “assign appropriate numbers of managers to closely observe all the reps/committee members on site…. Follow and make notes.” It also advocates the use of closed-circuit television as a surveillance tool.

CWU deputy general secretary David Ward stated October 28 that in the period following the one-day strikes, the bosses made “every effort to humiliate and provoke” the union members. “The list of petty penalties they tried to impose guaranteed a reaction from postal workers,” he said. “At various places they refused overtime, changed duties, insisted on working Saturday as a normal day, [and] victimized union representatives.”

Ward stressed that the union officials have not endorsed the industrial action. “The union is not backing unofficial action,” he said, “but neither can we deny that the amount of management provocation almost guaranteed a reaction.”

The government took a hostile stance toward the strikers. Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt demanded an end to “this damaging action.”

Postcomm, which is appointed by the government to regulate the industry, lifted restrictions on private firms that barred them from delivering mail, thereby aiding attempts to break the strike. One milk processing company, Express Dairies, instructed its milk delivery drivers to take on the delivery of business mail during the strike.

The London Times pointed to the union-busting policy of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher as an example because she allegedly “put an end to…wildcat strikes and demarcation disputes.” The big-business daily encouraged the government to adopt the same course and back the post office bosses in the current dispute.

The Confederation of British Industry and the Federation of Small Businesses both condemned the strike action. Roger Charles was unfazed by this opposition. “This is day six for us and our mood is still buoyant,” he said. Ben Copeland added, “We have to fight for ourselves and for a legacy, for the workers that come after us. I’ll see this through until the end.”

Jane Evans and Xose Añel contributed to this article.  
 
 
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