Morning Star (Sept. 15, 2020) ~ TUC Congress 2020: It's Crunch Time for the Trade Union Movement
As for Royal Mail, we still haven’t resolved our dispute with them – we’re in talks. But there’s been further talk about the possibility of cutting the universal service obligation.
Again during the pandemic we’ve seen just how important local postal workers and the service they provide are. And Royal Mail could be doing more – at the start of lockdown we made the offer, rather than going on strike when we got a Yes vote to do so, that Royal Mail could operate as a new emergency service – delivering prescriptions, linking up food banks, delivering testing. That’s an offer that still stands – particularly with the risk of a second wave.
Royal Mail is in a position to provide those things because it is unique in having a worker on every single street in the country, six days a week. But if it starts to roll back, if the government cuts that legal obligation, then the risk is we will see it go down the path of any low-cost parcel-delivery employer, like Yodel or DPD.
Our TUC motion on building a democratic new economy shows that we have an alternative vision. It means public ownership, and bringing Royal Mail back together with the Post Office, and setting up a Post Bank. But what we want to see is how it can grow and provide new services – rather than the leaders of the company saying we just need to reduce services and cut jobs until we’re just like any other parcel delivery firm.