Renationalise mail distribution Save City Link jobs!

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Rob Williams, National Shop Stewards Network chair
Almost 3,000 City Link workers are facing the New Year dole queue as the company is going into administration.

The RMT union represents these workers and expects them to receive redundancy notices on New Years Eve! But because the firm is going bankrupt, workers will only receive statutory payments of a maximum of nearly £14,000 for decades of service while most will get far less.

On top of this those workers who had to work as "self-employed" contractors with City Link will get no redundancy pay at all and become "unsecured" creditors of what is likely to be a bankrupt company.

This comes a year after the privatisation of Royal Mail and is further proof of how the postal and delivery sector is becoming ever more dog eat dog with bosses trying to push down workers' wages and terms and conditions and increasing zero-hour contracts and subcontracting.

The National Shop Stewards Network supports the call of RMT general secretary Mick Cash for City Link to be nationalised to save these jobs - as also does the Socialist Party. Mick Cash told the BBC: "If the government can nationalise the bankers then they can nationalise City Link, which is clearly in the public interest".

This call should be linked to the trade unions demanding the re-nationalisation of Royal Mail - where universal national equality of prices and service is now under threat on the altar of profits - and the rest of the companies in this sector.

A nationalised distribution service, run under democratic control, could provide both a unified delivery system and decent wages and conditions for its staff. This demand can unite workers, both directly and indirectly employed, across the industry and cut across the bosses' divide and rule tactics.

Scandalously, the Labour Party ruled out re-nationalising Royal Mail despite this being unanimously supported at last year's Labour Party conference.

The whole of the trade union movement should support these workers and any action they take. In 2009, 600 sacked workers at bankrupt Visteon occupied their plants, and while not able to keep their jobs, they won enhanced redundancy payments.

CWU members have just been on strike against job losses and the threat of compulsory redundancies for workers handling, collecting and distributing cash across the Post Office network.

Solidarity to the City Link workers!