Mirror:STOP ROGUE MAIL BASHING POSTIES.

[NEWS]

IT'S always good for a laugh when the bosses say they'll do the workers' jobs if they go on strike.

What they mean is - for 10 minutes while the TV cameras are rolling.

So I'm still smiling at the threat by Allan Leighton, chairman of Royal Mail, to abandon his desk for an early morning walk in the rain with a heavy bag over his shoulder.
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He and 6,000 senior managers say they will deliver the mail if the posties strike over pay and conditions, as they yesterday voted to do. The idea that they can do the work of 127,000 men and women is a joke. And an affront to public servants who have been kicked from pillar to postbox for years.

Forty-thousand jobs have gone since 2002.

To add insult to injury, Leighton is giving himself £100,000 bonus on top of his monster salary, while his sidekick chief executive Adam Crozier trousers an extra £370,000, taking his earnings to £1 million.

These are the fat cats who told the workers they can have 2.5 per cent or a lump sum of £600 - take it or leave it. Industrial relations do not get more sordid than this.

Posties have voted overwhelmingly to stage their first national strike since 1996. If they come out, I will back them all the way.

But I hope it doesn't come to that. I believe this act of bullying management is a set-up - a deliberate trap to starve postal workers into submission by driving them into a stoppage they can ill afford.

The way would then be open to privatise Royal Mail, with multi-million payoffs for top management.

I go back to the strike of 1971, when the Heath government took on the Union of Post Office Workers, led by the charismatic, moustacheioed Tom Jackson. The walkout was solid for seven weeks, but they went back for very little gain and much loss.

Since then, and the last stoppage in 1996, the scene has been transformed. Never mind the fax machine - email, texting and other forms of electronic communication have taken over from the letter. One-day strikes could go on for months without paralysing the nation.

There must be ways of avoiding a dispute the bosses clearly want. The conciliation service, Acas, has a duty to intervene and seek a settlement. I understand that the posties are particularly angry at the withdrawal of early morning shift pay, worth £20 a week. That should be restored to sustain morning deliveries.

Above all, this is a dispute from which a Labour government cannot stand aside. Royal Mail is a public company, and the invisible Industry Secretary, Alastair Darling, should call off the attack dogs, Leighton and Crozier.

This affair will be a test case for the new Gordon Brown government. If he looks to conciliation, that will be a signal to the core Labour vote.

If he sides with the bosses, we know what we are in for.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

A story in the national press that really knows what is going on and is correct in the most part.

Well done the "Mirror"

[IWW Fellow Worker]

That's quite a good piece. I have to object to the use of the word 'earned' when mentioning the cash this pair of upper class muggers get. The fact is, these people have never actually earned a penny in their lives. They're in the same class as armed robbers, burglers, drug dealers and people who sell blag DVDs and we would all be much better off with the likes of them gone.

[F0zziebear]

It is the government (A labour one) who are giving RM the loan with strings in the first place. This is the loan that requires hundreds of milllions of savings. Leighton and Crozier are their puppy dogs who are going to implement it. The Labour Mirror seems to have forgotten the Labour Party's approach to this. They also forget to mention that it is a labour government who privatised Royal Mail and liberalised the market when several other European nations have refused. Yes RM is a private company wholly owned by the government, but those shares could quite easily if the conditions were right be sold off. If you think I am mad then do not forget that talks were held with some of our European neighbours about buying Royal Mail!

Yours annoyed once again witrh the press

F0zz

p.s. I equally criticised an article in the Independent the other before anyone accuses me of being some right-wing capitalist!

[robmacca]

It's refreshing to read a story that takes our perspective and Fozziebear is right - we are where we are because of New Labour's back-door privatization.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

F0zzie said

before anyone accuses me of being some right-wing capitalist!

I only know 2 Right wing capitalists - Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.