Communication Worker Union’s Martin Walsh opposes call for rank-and-file fightback at Royal Mail

[stage3]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026 ... -f05.html

Tony Robson

The call by the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) to make 2026 the year of a fightback by Royal Mail workers has provoked an attempted push back by Communication Worker Union (CWU) postal deputy general secretary Martin Walsh on social media.

This took place on the Royal Mail Chat.co.uk forum after the statement “Make 2026 the start of a fightback at Royal Mail against CWU collusion with EP Group and Starmer government” had received several hundred views since being posted to the site on January 27. The response by Walsh on January 30 was a six-word throwaway line: “This has not lasted well at all!”


Martin Walsh speaking at a CWU Live meeting (screenshot) [Photo: CWU Live/YouTube]
The PWRFC statement reported on a brutal Christmas period marked by the continuing breakdown of the mail service, as profitable parcel deliveries were prioritised through punishing workloads imposed on staff in understaffed delivery offices following thousands of job losses.

Walsh’s refusal to even address this reality typifies the unaccountability of the union bureaucracy. As the statement explained, the crisis pushing postal workers to breaking point is the direct result of last May’s £3.6 billion takeover of Royal Mail by billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group, which became sole owner in order to gut the mail service and turn it into a low-wage parcel operation.

CWU General Secretary Dave Ward, his deputy Walsh and the CWU postal executive have acted as enforcers with their EP Group Framework Agreement signed with Kretinsky in December 2024. This was a companion piece to the Starmer Labour government’s Deed of Undertaking with Kretinksy: based on lax regulation to allow restructuring and asset stripping to proceed. The regulator Ofcom cleared the decks with its approval last July to dismantle the six-day Universal Service Obligation (USO) with alternate weekday delivery for all mail other than First Class and reduced targets for all letters.

The PWRFC stated:

We have opposed the manufacturing of consent by Walsh and Ward. After agreeing to the Framework Agreement with the Starmer government and Kretinsky, Ward, Walsh and the executive put it to a members’ ballot more than half a year later, packaged as part of the three-year pay deal. The so-called ‘reset’ claimed it secured “stability” based on a pay award tied to the lower CPI inflation rate—another real-terms pay cut.

The result in August witnessed mass abstention, securing the Yes vote of just one in three members. Even this depended on pledges—described as Part 2 of the Framework Agreement—to resolve “outstanding issues.”

Most significant was the promise of an equalisation pathway for new entrants on inferior pay and terms, now unceremoniously ditched. Despite the CWU conceding that qualification could take three years, deadlines to agree a deal with the company in September and December were broken.

The statement drew attention to the “update” from Walsh and the CWU executives on January 20 claiming their “groundbreaking agreement” had not been honoured when its essential content was to impose a corporate scorched earth policy, cloaked in the language of USO “reform”.

Walsh played a direct role in the downpayment of this with the Terms of Reference drawn up with Royal Mail to implement the Optimised Delivery Model (ODM) in December 2024. The ODM is based on gig economy work practices, collapsing four duties into three and increased delivery spans at 35 delivery units on the pretext these were “pilots”. The ODM has been an unmitigated disaster mired by mail service breakdown and crippling workloads.


Walsh has tried to keep a lid on this while the PWRFC has exposed the reality and argued for a unified fightback. The day before his swipe against the PWRFC the company called time on the fraud that these were merely trials and triggered the one-month Dispute Resolution Process threatening executive action to impose the roll out of ODM across 1,250 offices nationally.

Walsh is now attempting to pull off the awkward pose of opposition to the threatened unilateral action and failure to agree on ODM. However, his loyalty to the cost cutting exercise is total with the continued commitment to “introduce USO reform at every workplace” based on the “dynamics of the market and commercial realities.” (CWU Letter to Branches, January 20, 2026)

This entirely excludes the independent standpoint of workers and is aimed at countering any genuine organised opposition as Walsh goes into damage limitation mode on behalf of the company.

Below we are publishing the reply by a PWRFC supporter to Walsh’s comment on Royal Mail Chat.

We encourage rank and file postal workers to extend this discussion not just on social media but within their workplaces away from management and their stooges in the CWU apparatus: in genuine and open forums where workers—union and non-union members—can draw up their red lines.

The CWU apparatus enforcing of the two-tier workforce is a particularly toxic part of its sellout deal in July 2023. Equal pay for equal work is not negotiable. There must be an immediate levelling up not a strung-out process over years which is paid for by postal workers through the cost cutting of hundreds of millions of pounds to be pocketed by Kretinsky and EP Group.

This must be fought for as part of the defence of every job and opposition to intensified and unsafe workloads. Such a struggle would find support in the working class coming into conflict with the Starmer government’s austerity and cuts across public services and dismantling of the National Health Service on behalf of big business to divert vital funding to waging wars.

*****

Reply to Walsh:


Your comment implies that the PWRFC statement has been disproven by events over the past few days.

How exactly is this the case?

In fact, nothing has aged more badly than your pro-company agreements—first the Business Transformation Agreement, and then the Framework Agreement with EP Group—which have inflicted this disaster.

The statement summed up an experience that has become an everyday reality: chronic understaffing, unsafe workloads, the prioritisation of parcels, and the creation of postal deserts.

Who is meant to be taken in by your claim that the CWU leadership does not agree with the Optimised Delivery Model (ODM)? You agreed to impose this model foisted on 35 delivery units from early last year. You signed up to it with Royal Mail without any consent from the membership as part of the Framework Agreement with Kretinsky—preparatory to its national rollout.

It is worth recalling that the last time you challenged the PWRFC, in March last year, it was to oppose our “interference” with the trials. You equated members holding workplace meetings to scrutinise the content of the ODM and democratically agree a course of action to defend jobs and oppose unsafe workloads as some kind of unofficial action. This was while you cited Ofcom as the ultimate authority, insisted there was no alternative, and demanded that £300 million of cuts had to be made.

Do we really need to ask who has been vindicated by the operational breakdown and gig-economy conditions that have prevailed in the pilot sites? Yet in your Letter to Branches of January 29, even as the company threatens executive action to roll out ODM across all 1,250 delivery offices, you state that “we will enter negotiations to try and persuade Royal Mail to adopt the heavy and light model which worked with a number of pilot sites during the peak.”

What proof have you provided to members to substantiate this claim? Your “constructive counter proposal” is based on squeezing more productivity on top of already crippling workloads, paving the way for further job losses.

Your attacks on the PWRFC are made because it raises uncomfortable truths about USO “reform”, challenges your lack of accountability, and argues for power to be placed back where it belongs—in the hands of the rank and file—to wage a fight, not appease billionaire equity owners.

[Playmail]

well said

[moon71]

Why won't the PWRFC make a proper legal union? They've clearly, ahem, got a massive support on the shop floor. By now you most have over 350 members on Facebook.

Or just take control of the CWU from within. As people vote for the leadership, if nominations state they are affiliated to the PWRFC, surely they'd take control. PWRFC clearly think they have massive support from the membership and surely if they have over 50% of the union support, they would be steering the ship anyway.

I invite, in a polite way, to all the PWRFC to do something big instead of just posting on a board that is probably read by 2% of the workforce. Your constant sniping is just sadly negative words.

2026, the year for the PWRFC to think big, get your message out, and see the support.

Alternatively just sh!t stir, your really good at that. And that's getting more exciting now, to see an organisation that calls more than half the workforce sell outs and traitors for agreeing the last agreement vote.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

[tramssirhc]

Hot take. Get ready for the CWU attack bots.

[Playmail]

Same old cwu cultists who think cwu can't do anything wrong, if your Netflix or Internet suppliers wasn't working or doing a shoddy job you would either cancel or make a complaint. Stage3 comments are keeping the union to account of there work I am not saying the workplace would be better without a union but if it doesn't work fix it by changing the leadership that has failed its workforce with awful payrises, awful terms and conditions and keep telling us we can do more work when clearly every worker doesn't have anymore time to give.

[Playmail]

If a company isn't making a profit on me doing
200 tracked parcels
9 specials
45 1st letters
400/500 2nd class letters
250 d2ds
And collections
In 6 hours there's clearly something wrong above what the postie is doing why is it always the postie can do more.

[Saturn1]

If a company isn't making a profit on me doing
200 tracked parcels
9 specials
45 1st letters
400/500 2nd class letters
250 d2ds
And collections
In 6 hours there's clearly something wrong above what the postie is doing why is it always the postie can do more.

It's because they want more profit. The whole overpaid management structure relies on boots on the ground doing the work. They'd sooner attack you and the USO than streamline their side of the business.

[stage3]

Moon71 is telling stone wall lies. He can point to nothing the PWRFC has said which calls "more than half the workforce sell outs and traitors for agreeing the last agreement vote"

For those who believe the truth matters this is what we wrote on the sellout agreement in 2023:

"While the bureaucracy worked furiously to push a Yes vote, offering a £900 increase to the lump sum (conditional on endorsing the deal) and preying on the financial distress facing members, the Yes vote is above all a vote of no-confidence in the CWU leadership.

The vast majority of those who voted “Yes” do not support the agreement’s assault on their hard-won conditions and entitlements. But they did not see any way forward.

Those who voted “No” represent the most militant and principled section of workers. Under any other circumstances they would have been the basis for mobilising the entire membership in a struggle to defeat Royal Mail’s attacks, but they were suppressed and savagely betrayed by the bureaucracy.

Ward made clear the CWU will press ahead immediately with implementing the agreement, “We want nothing more than to work together with the company.”

On the EP Framework Agreement we wrote:

"We have opposed the manufacturing of consent by Walsh and Ward. After agreeing to the Framework Agreement with the Starmer government and Kretinsky, Ward, Walsh and the executive put it to a members’ ballot more than half a year later, packaged as part of the three-year pay deal. The so-called “reset” claimed it secured “stability” based on a pay award tied to the lower CPI inflation rate—another real-terms pay cut.

The result in August witnessed mass abstention, securing the Yes vote of just one in three members. Even this depended on pledges—described as Part 2 of the Framework Agreement—to resolve “outstanding issues.”

Most significant was the promise of an equalisation pathway for new entrants on inferior pay and terms, now unceremoniously ditched. Despite the CWU conceding that qualification could take three years, deadlines to agree a deal with the company in September and December were broken."

Moon71 can have his opinion but facts are stubborn things. He is trying to shift responsibility away from where it lies with Ward & Co for the sellouts His methods of gaslighting will be all too familiar with any postal worker who has been censored or treated with the same type of slanders from CWU HQ.

[stage3]

Same old cwu cultists who think cwu can't do anything wrong, if your Netflix or Internet suppliers wasn't working or doing a shoddy job you would either cancel or make a complaint. Stage3 comments are keeping the union to account of there work I am not saying the workplace would be better without a union but if it doesn't work fix it by changing the leadership that has failed its workforce with awful payrises, awful terms and conditions and keep telling us we can do more work when clearly every worker doesn't have anymore time to give.

Spot on

[bowie]

I would say if your doing that much work in 6 hours you are rushing about like a blue arse fly,200 tracked on the pda would be well over 6 hours

[moon71]

I would say if your doing that much work in 6 hours you are rushing about like a blue arse fly,200 tracked on the pda would be well over 6 hours

Yup. It doesn't add up. Post was sprinkled with a fair bit of exaggeration. 200 tracked on a dpr would retail in at the very least in my area as 11.30hrs-13hrs.

[stage3]

I would say if your doing that much work in 6 hours you are rushing about like a blue arse fly,200 tracked on the pda would be well over 6 hours

Yup. It doesn't add up. Post was sprinkled with a fair bit of exaggeration. 200 tracked on a dpr would retail in at the very least in my area as 11.30hrs-13hrs.

Yes we would not want anyone to get the idea posties are being worked to the bone: spoken as ever like a reliable mouthpiece of management Moon71.

Speaking of which Tony Bouch CWU Outdoor Secretary stated on CWU Live in October 2024 about increased workloads:

“If I get 50 extra parcels a day that’s 50 minutes.” He said it 9 minutes in , you can watch it and read the comments left by delivery workers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCT73jxmpnw


Bouch has been overseeing the ODM at the pilot offices. Complaints about exaggerating the workloads postal workers can carry out should be addressed to CWU HQ not directed against those speaking out against the dire consequences this has created.

[stage3]

To clear up a vital issue once and for all, the PWRFC is not calling for a decampment from the CWU, nor do we seek separate recognition with the company.

We stand for the organisation of the rank and file to wage a fight against both the company and the CWU leadership, so that its collusion does not dictate the agenda where postal workers know they are being sold out but feel driven to quit or picked off by management victimisation.

RM and EP Group now feels emboldened to impose ODM nationally via executive action, as Walsh and the union executive seek the backing for their repackaging of the cuts and pledge to increase unsafe and unmanageable workloads.

This shows the current set-up is rotten to the core. The sentiment to defend jobs, T&C’s and the public service is not a minority position. It feels like it because they find no outlet through the bureaucratic channels of Industrial Relations used to police the workforce on behalf of the profits of EP Group working in partnership with the Starmer government.

We support every effort to remove Walsh & Co. This means restoring power to the shopfloor and mounting a coordinated campaign across the entire Group, with decision-making and strategy placed in the hands of those who want to wage a genuine struggle against the company – the rank and file – where it belongs.

[Acca Dacca]

To clear up a vital issue once and for all, the PWRFC is not calling for a decampment from the CWU, nor do we seek separate recognition with the company.

We stand for the organisation of the rank and file to wage a fight against both the company and the CWU leadership, so that its collusion does not dictate the agenda where postal workers know they are being sold out but feel driven to quit or picked off by management victimisation.

RM and EP Group now feels emboldened to impose ODM nationally via executive action, as Walsh and the union executive seek the backing for their repackaging of the cuts and pledge to increase unsafe and unmanageable workloads.

This shows the current set-up is rotten to the core. The sentiment to defend jobs, T&C’s and the public service is not a minority position. It feels like it because they find no outlet through the bureaucratic channels of Industrial Relations used to police the workforce on behalf of the profits of EP Group working in partnership with the Starmer government.

We support every effort to remove Walsh & Co. This means restoring power to the shopfloor and mounting a coordinated campaign across the entire Group, with decision-making and strategy placed in the hands of those who want to wage a genuine struggle against the company – the rank and file – where it belongs.

By doing what then?

If you arent advocating workers leaving the CWU then what exactly can you actually do to force any change?

[moon71]

Everytime the PWRFC posters brand the last agreement as the "Sell out agreement" with certain posters using the words " working class traitors" on numerous posts, it's with sadness, that an open minded person would say that the PWRFC isn't for the majority of the people that voted YES to the last agreement.

The PWRFC definitely doesn't represent the majority of the workforce. Instead of slapping me down, calling me names, recently, CWU ATTACK BOT. Why not come up with something big that doesn't slap the majority down. What organisation that tries to gain support smashes down with ridicule, more than half the workforce. It's embarrassing to the PWRFC.

People are listening. But all they see is spite, pettiness and nastiness.

It's not hard to be nice. Come on PWRFC, sell us something. I've been waiting 3 years. I left the Union 3 weeks ago, but you offer nothing better, only bitter dispute with an employer that wants it as an excuse to worsen my conditions.

How's the depression trams? Have you made any life changes yet, or employment changes, you can move forward from this depressive wasteland you live in.