The biggest strike of the summer so far began today (Friday, August 26) as 115,000 postal workers from the Communication Workers Union (CWU) came out calling for a pay rise matching inflation. In Bristol alone there were 39 picket lines across mail and distribution centres.
This will be followed by further strike action next Wednesday, August 31, Thursday, September 8 and Friday, September 9. The decision follows the union’s recent ballot for strike action over pay, which saw members vote by 97.6 per cent on a 77 per cent turnout to take action.
The union is demanding that Royal Mail Group make a pay award that covers the current cost of living increases. Management at Royal Mail imposed a two per cent pay rise on employees, who were classified as key workers throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
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The Royal Mail Group claim they are losing £1 million a day but the CWU and members who are striking today in Bristol dispute this. The company recorded an annual profit of £758 million, gave £400 million to shareholders and gave in excess of £2 million in executive bonuses.
Steve Hiscox, the area processing rep for Bristol Mail Centre in Filton, claimed that the company has spent over £1.9 million in what appears to be efforts to break the strike action. Mr Hiscox said: “Only on Tuesday this week they announced that they were going to give £1,000 to the lower managers and £1,500 to the higher managers, that is around £7 million pounds. The company says they are losing £1 million a day.
“Let's be clear about the £1 million a day, they’re not losing £1 million a day because it would have been in their share prospectus that they sent out two months ago. Every single thing that they spent is in there, what they are losing is £1 million a day compared to last year.
“This time last year they had a massive Covid contract paid for by the government. They are still making a massive profit - if a company is in trouble, you do not pay a dividend.
"We have been privatised for ten years now and one year they paid absolutely nothing because they could not afford to pay the shareholder.
“This year it’s 13 pence per share so that’s another £130 million that they found to pay the shareholder and not us and I think that’s shambolic when they’ve made the money off the back of the postal worker. We have lost nationally three postal workers who passed away during this dispute through Covid related illness.
“These guys have given their life for this business and there are people here, like myself, I’ve done 32 years. We’re passionate about the job and the latest plan from the CEO, Simon Thompson is to reduce a six day service to a 3 day service, effectively your address could have a delivery every other day.
“We are passionate about public service and going to every address for six days a week. These people are earning absolutely eye-watering sums of money and all they want to do is make it a race to the bottom and take even more money from the postal worker.”
The Bristol Mail centre covers post from across Gloucester, Bath and Taunton as well as Bristol. After around 50 per cent of mail centres were closed nationally as part of the Mail Centre rationalisation programme, workers from across the South West say they are having to travel up to 70 miles to work in the Bristol Mail Centre.
Paul Hewitt, the deputy area rep for processing at the Bristol Mail Centre, believes that with an increase in strikes across sectors, striking postal workers are no different from anyone else. For Mr Hewitt the cost of living crisis and the stagnation of workers wages means that the general public are left with nothing.
He said: “With all these strikes going on, a common criticism has been made to union officials that ‘this is just militant trade unionists again, stirring up trouble, it’s going back to the 70s'. What happened at Amazon in Avonmouth where the workers actually went in and had a sit-down [protest], they had their own strike there.
“This is a place which is non-unionised, Amazon doesn’t even recognise trade unions and yet the workers sat down and took their own industrial action. It just goes to show what's happening in the country at the moment.
“The people at the bottom have had enough of the people at the top taking all the cream and giving us the scraps. It’s not just about trade unions, it’s about the general public fighting against the people at the top taking all the money and leaving us with nothing.”
Although the current strike is over pay, with CWU members at Royal Mail rejecting the two per cent pay offer and asking for a pay rise in line with inflation, there have also been proposals to strip back terms and conditions. Postal workers on strike on Friday in Bristol said that the company wants to stop sick pay, introduce a disruption to shift patterns and mandatory Sunday shifts.
If the new terms and conditions are introduced it would mean postal workers would not get any pay for their first three sick days. The CWU disputes the claim made by Royal Mail that a 5.5 per cent pay offer has been made and said the company has offered an additional 1.5 per cent - on top of the 2 per cent - but that this would come with changes to terms and conditions attached.
Eugene Long, the CWU rep for Bristol East, was on a lively picket line today at Prospect Place. The striking postal workers had a barbeque and a crowd of supporters joining them from the community union, ACORN.
Mr Long said: “I’ve been working for Royal Mail for 37 years. The last 15 years it’s been a lot worse and more demanding. The CEOs and directors have just had a midterm bonus of £250,000 and also they paid a load of managers off in early retirement.
“They are saying they are losing a million a day, they have been saying that for the last 15 years. Another thing that was a kick in the teeth is that they offered managers to work today an excess of £1000 to £1500, even though they’re losing £1 million a day, so they say.
“We just want to keep our terms and conditions and a decent pay rise that’s in line with inflation and bearing in mind a lot of these staff have worked two years through the pandemic, keeping the public connected and Royal Mail said they’d look after us. We were the main line of keeping everyone connected but now they’ve just shot us down in flames."
In a statement on Thursday, Royal Mail said the strikes had plunged the company into “the most uncertain time of its 500-year history.”
“Our future is as a parcels business. We must adapt old ways of working designed for letters to a world increasingly dominated by parcels, and we must act fast,” the company said.
“We want to protect well-paid, permanent jobs long-term and retain our place as the industry leader on pay, terms and conditions. That is in the best interests of Royal Mail and all its employees.”
Royal Mail accused the union’s proposals of being resistant to change and said the CWU’s vision for the company’s future “would create a vicious spiral of falling volumes, higher prices, bigger losses, and fewer jobs.”
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