Daily Mirror support postal workers aim for talks

[stephen500]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists ... -19529668/
PAUL ROUTLEDGE
Labour's guilty of Mail chauvinism
Paul Routledge 27/07/2007
More Paul Routledge
YESTERDAY, MPs went on holiday for 10 weeks. In that time, they will earn as much as the average postal worker gets in a year.

Today, posties around the country are striking against Royal Mail's bid to impose a Scrooge pay rise linked to massive job cuts.

The contrast could scarcely be greater. Postal workers lose income while fat-cat politicians coin it.

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Only 115 MPs - one in six - have signed a motion calling on the government to open real talks with the Communications Workers Union. The rest slunk off in disgrace.

John Hutton, £137,579 a year Business and Enterprise Secretary and ultimate boss of Royal Mail staff, met CWU leaders briefly earlier this week. Since then, silence.

Why doesn't Hutton, the last Tory-Blairite in the Cabinet, do his political duty and solve a conflict happening on his watch?

He boasts that he joined the Conservative Association at Oxford. But he's too busy to intervene in a dispute that shut down Royal Mail for two 24-hour stoppages, and threatens to run right through the summer.

Why? Because, he says: "I want Labour to be the natural party of business." What he means is the natural party of businessmen.

Businessmen like Allan Leighton and Adam Crozier, whose millionpound salaries put even Hutton's rake-off in the shade.

They are running the Royal Mail. Into the ground. They hide behind a "commercial agreement" with the government.

And ministers are hiding behind the bosses' skirts.

They all pass the buck, while the parcels don't get delivered. There were even secret plans to abolish the postal workers' pension scheme - but the Mirror's Clinton Manning ended that by exposing the £1.5bn proposals.

I suspect Royal Mail bosses, and ministers, are deliberately playing this dispute long - classic Tory tactics, unworthy of a Labour government.

Not only is this policy immoral, it's politically unwise. If the posties are defeated, how many will vote Labour at the next election? Does he want them to go the same way as the firefighters and the rail union RMT - out of the party?

These people deserve better treatment. People like Richard Yates, 55, who waded through floodwater almost to his waist to deliver copies of the new Harry Potter to residents in Evesham, Worcs. He puts wannabe-hardman Hutton to shame.

The B&E Secretary should remember Labour is the natural party of decency, or it is nothing. There is a way to solve this dispute.

Give postal workers worthwhile incentives to modernise - on their wages, not as a one-off sum for surrender.

[johnnyp]

Top Bloke Always shows goverments and fat cat bosses up for what they really are,thank god weve got a bloke like him in the national media standing up for the working man,letting the public know whats really going on

[ROCKY]

blimey a good news item i may have to buy a paper again to support these people,as for politicians ,why should they care they make a complete fu?? up of whatever job they are supposed to be doing, get sacked for a couple of months, and then get another high paying post and do it all over again

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Cracking piece .

[johno47]

Great piece, going to copy it and show the lads on the picket line tomorrow...UNITY IS STRENGTH.

[rhino49]

Good circulation too - that should make a few more people aware of what's going on - well done Paul, you tell it like it is

[bigsharkboy]

[DirtyHarry]

Both have proven to be good friends to postal workers , at a time when it appears we have few in both the media and
the government.

Thanks fellas.

[dongash]

good on you paul routledge, i think you are the only person to publicly to support the postal staff !

[vigilante]

brilliant.
great truth told.

we are the realists-------------they are the b*******g liars