Chaos and Disruption in the British Postal System

The U.K. postal system is now the largest ‘unreformed’ bastion of state enterprise. The historical role of state enterprises has always been to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie as a whole. There have always been attempts at turning them into private businesses where possible, and when these collapse state-run operations are considered. This is the whole basis of the private-public sector debates.

The strategy of the Blair Government has been to create a state-sponsored ‘Watch-dog’ (Postcomm), which puts the economic pressure on the postal service by preventing increases in the price of the mail delivery. Its role is allegedly to look after the interests of the ’consumer’. The purpose of this was to force the management of Royal Mail to further the attacks upon all the workers employed by Royal Mail. These same attacks led to increasing numbers of strikes, virtually all unofficial, as well as chaos within the postal system.

Unofficial strikes in the postal service in 2001 constituted 62,000 working days ’lost’, a significant part of the national total of working days ’lost’ by strikes during this period. With a total workforce of approximately 200,000, divided between the sorting, delivery, parcel section and post office counter staff, this is still a large state controlled enterprise, employing a really significant section of workers.

Warnings were being advanced from all sides that with the introduction of electronic forms of communication, the need for a postal system was not assured. The postal workers had better watch out otherwise machines would replace them the threat went. Competition from other country’s postal systems may mean that junk mail distribution would go to countries like the United States or Holland, where a cheaper rate is offered. To ‘keep’ jobs means worse conditions are to be expected. Not only are they to be ‘competitive’ as far as the sorting of ’junk mail’ is concerned, the delivery workers are also to become a leaflet distribution service as well.

There has already been a restructuring of Royal Mail (the state enterprise), which has now had a holding company named Consignia. Incredible sums of money were spent on corporate advertising (all of which the workers are paying a high price for). Big ‘debates’ took place within the ruling class, which filtered down to the trendy left, about the future of the postal service. Should it stay in state hands, be fully privatised, or some sort of hybrid (to keep all sides happy). But no matter what the final form the future post system takes, private or public, the attacks will continue upon the conditions of the postal workers.

The reorganisation of Royal Mail

Basically there were four sections to the old Royal Mail: Post Office Counters, Royal Mail Sorting (including the overnight transport by road and rail), Royal Mail Delivery and Parcelforce. While it was still making a profit (and paying a good chunk of it to the Government) there wasn’t a problem. With the pressure to keep the postage prices down, the only way for the management of the postal system was to cheapen costs. That inevitably means taking it out on the workers. The lines of attack have been as follows:

Post Office Counters – the numbers of Post Offices, where postage stamps etc can be bought, council tax and utility bills paid in, state benefits paid out, various licences and passports renewed, have been steadily declining over the years. Suggestions about closing down the countryside post offices has led to opposition from people concerned about the Government finishing off of the only places that they have contact with the outside world.

Royal Mail Sorting – sorting offices are now being concentrated in larger units, almost county wide in organisation. The work-force at the sorting offices had always been a permanent establishment, with casuals being brought in at specific periods, such as the lead up to Christmas, or for holiday cover. Now casual workers are becoming a regular feature of the sorting offices. The work-force is increasingly becoming a three-tier one, with a smaller permanent staff, those on short-term contracts (usually three months) and casuals (often day to day).

Management tries to get around any ‘problems’ which arise by moving the mail to be sorted to other areas. The natural and instinctive reaction of other workers is to ‘black’, that is refuse to touch, this transferred mail. Those workers who are required to start processing this ‘strike-bound’ mail consequently refuse leading them to be threatened, then suspended, so a strike breaks out over those workers being suspended. The reaction of the workers is unofficial, instinctive and immediate. Despite being a separate strike issue, it is in effect a spreading of the original strike. This moving around of mail to avoid a strike leads to the strike being spread.

Mail has been frequently moved around between sorting centres to utilise ’spare capacity’. It is far from unusual for local mail to be sent from South East England to Edinburgh to be sorted and returned – what should have been a few miles journey had turned into an 800 mile round trip. All this has actually led to increases in costs. The cost for wages had increased by £65 million and transport costs had grown by £17 million, which in total was almost double what had been invested in new technology.

In June the postal industry’s regulator, Postcomm, issued a consultation document advocated the opening up the mail system to other businesses that have distribution networks. The purpose of this was to scrap the postal system’s own transport system by using other distribution systems, such as those of supermarkets.

Royal Mail Delivery – the delivering of the mail has always been a labour intensive operation. Prospects for privatising, or replacing, the delivery service seemed improbable for the government, so more direct ways increasing the exploitation of the delivery workers have been devised. The traditional way was for delivery postal workers would take bags of post out with them and so organise their own time and schedules. This has now been short circuited by the arrangement of regular drop off points where postal vans deliver bags of mail to locked containers rather than delivery workers returning to the sorting office for more. This will inevitably lead to a reduction in the number of ‘posties’ [postal delivery workers] employed.

Parcelforce – plans were well advanced to end the Parcelforce operation, which is a subsidiary of Royal Mail. The parcel delivery side has been a financial liability for years, so the plan involves hiving it off into self-employed operations in the near future. Something like 12,000 employees are likely to be involved in this process.

In order to prepare for this, financial restructuring was planned. This involves the asset base of the parcel operation being ‘written off’, which is done by a rather neat way of converting profits into apparent losses. This happens by ‘writing off’ assets from the balance sheet by deducting this same amount from the profits made, thereby converting tasty profits into apparent losses. For private businesses this is then transformed into losses, which are tax deductible, and all the accountants smile at the foresight and responsible attitudes of management. But for Consignia, this was to lead to a torrent of hysterical abuse from the media.

An example of unofficial strikes in the postal system

The events of the latter part of May last year are very instructive about how this process operates. On the 18th May trouble broke out at the Watford sorting office. Changes to sorting workers’ shift patterns, with some sorting staff being moved on to nights, were imposed. This provoked a walk out by the postal workers. Areas of London were immediately affected as a direct result of the stoppage.

Mail, which had not been sorted, was sent to the main sorting office in Liverpool, which deals with the sorting and delivery for a part of South Lancashire. Management hoped by this move to introduce the letters, etc, into the postal system and short circuit the Watford ’problem’. This provoked an immediate unofficial strike, with the sorting workers going on strike, before it could be put into the hands of the Communication Workers Union (CWU). Unsorted mail, whether originally from Watford or now from Liverpool, was then moved on to Chester (serving Cheshire and North Wales) and Preston (dealing with areas of Northern Lancashire). This provoked strikes in these two areas over this ’blacked’ mail. The robust actions of Management further spread the dispute.

In the meantime the original dispute at Watford had been settled and the sorting workers returned to work. Shortly afterwards they heard that first Liverpool and then Chester and Preston had walked out in support of their original strike. This led to the Watford workers walking out in solidarity to their Northern fellow workers – this is clearly an example of solidarity in support of solidarity!

The importance of this strike (by now a strike wave, threatening to become national in scope) was that it was escalating during the run up to the General Election. The media began to scream that democracy itself was in danger! The free delivery of electoral statements, as well as postal votes, were likely to disrupted by the postal strike. The General election had already been deferred because of the foot and mouth outbreaks in the countryside, and could not be deferred again. Still the postal workers were not inclined to cave in to the demands of the state and its defenders. The strikes were finally quietly settled, after all the shouting and hysterics.

The Consequences of ‘reorganising’ the Postal Service

Postwatch (an unofficial consumer’s watchdog) has recently stated that approximately one million items of mail disappear within the postal system every week. Whether these include all the items returned to the sender with labels on, stating ‘addressee gone away’, etc., for no apparent reason, is not known. It is one form of resistance to management’s reign of terror that mail gets ‘lost’, dumped, damaged in machinery, or just returned. Later more direct expressions of class struggle are bound to arise.

By the Autumn the pressure was on the postal system to deal with its problems, or the state monopoly for the delivery system could end. In October a moratorium on industrial actions was signed between Consignia and the UCW.

November turned out to be a particularly stormy month for Consignia. It was announced that the second delivery of the day was may be scrapped, with customers who expected an early delivery should either pay extra for the privilege, or pick up the mail themselves. The CWU was quick in declaring that it would welcome any discussions about improving services, providing that their concern about jobs were recognised. Then there were reports about a threatened strike by postal workers in Hampshire because workers there were not inclined to tuck in their shirts, even though their contracts of employment state that they should be ‘tucked in’ to the trousers. Whether this distain for tucking in shirts is a recognised fashion statement, or a sign of discontent, in not clear. The CWU was quick off the mark in calling for the wording of the contract of employment to be changed so that it reads shirts ‘may be’ tucked in instead of ‘should’. It is clearly apparent that the CWU is more determined in defending untucked shirts, rather than the postal workers from being bullied and harassed by management.

On 26th November an editorial in The Times croaked out the opinion that this was the time to privatise the Post Office. Only this ‘freedom’ from state control would enable the management of Consignia to implement the necessary changes. After being for many years profitable, The Times stated that in the previous year an operating loss of £3 million had been incurred. In fact the previous financial year (2000) there had been an operating profit of £385 million, the year before that (1999) the operating profit had been £608 million. Forty per cent of the profit surplus, reduced from the previous eighty per cent, went to the national Treasury. The timing of this comment was unfortunate – because later that day the latest financial returns were published, which showed a new total loss £281 million in the previous six months (which included the ‘writing off’ of Parcelforce assets, along with the closure of nearly 550 Post Offices). The announcement of these large losses started off a media campaign against Consignia management.

Immediate measures would need to be taken said Consignia to remedy this large ‘loss’ – the second daily delivery would have to go, along with 20,000 employees, ten per cent of the total work-force. The media turned on Consignia’s management with an unusual ferocity. The expected cancellation of the second delivery was itself cancelled, while the projected redundancies were themselves withdrawn, and instead to be discussed with the CWU. The media’s perception of Consignia’s management now changed, from being the ‘saviours’ of the postal service, they were now cast as overpaid nonentities. Perhaps the dismissals should start at the very top was the unanimous opinion of the press.

Calls for privatisation have since then been rather muted. The plans for the expected reduction of tens of thousands of postal workers’ jobs are still to be put into effect.