Saturday, April 21, 2007

National Strike Ballot in Royal Mail?

We reproduce below news from the CWU in relation to negootiations with Royal Mail.

Royal Mail Pay 2007

A further meeting took place with Royal Mail yesterday afternoon. The meeting concluded with Royal Mail still refusing to offer our members any basic pay increase. Instead, they revised their position by increasing the range of lump sums on offer from between £250/£400 to £250/£550. These lump sums remain conditional on the Union signing up to specific savings initiatives, most of which amount to significant pay cuts and involve major change.

Royal Mail’s position on local productivity remains unchanged. We have totally rejected Royal Mail’s offer and informed them that their overall position is completely unacceptable to the Union.

We have told Royal Mail that we are prepared to deal with Major Change, Efficiency and the Challenges facing the company – but this is conditional on them significantly improving our members’ terms and conditions and honouring the commitments they made to raise the value and status of postal workers’ jobs.

A key factor in our negotiations has been our insistence that Royal Mail back off from introducing panic driven cost cutting measures at local level. Therefore, we have offered Royal Mail the opportunity for a moratorium on managerial executive action and industrial action over efficiency issues. This was rejected out of hand by Royal Mail.

The Union remains committed to achieving a negotiated settlement but we cannot allow Royal Mail to drive down our members’ terms and conditions.

We have advised Royal Mail that we are prepared to continue negotiations. However, the business has left us with no alternative other than to prepare the ground for an industrial action ballot. Therefore, CWU Headquarters has begun the process of ensuring that membership lists are up to date and meet the necessary legal requirements.

Following a joint meeting yesterday with the Postal Executive and Divisional Reps, we have asked the Divisional Representatives to take a number of initiatives designed to gain support for the Union’s course of action.

We will be writing direct to members next week to explain the overall position. In the meantime, it is essential that Branches continue to communicate face to face with our members at every opportunity.
Yours sincerely

Dave Ward
Deputy General Secretary

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