National Industrial Action Ballot Timetable Announced Ltb

[clashcityrocker]

f**k any type of privatisation and it dosent help talking like that on the eve of war!

Agreed.
It's like saying we have lost the war but we are going to fight a few skirmishes in the hope they won't massacre us.

It really makes no difference,the "war" is about protecting our terms and conditions,pensions and fighting against unfair workloads and harassment,that fight will be the same no matter who owns us,If we're sold it makes it more difficult to do it but it doesn't change the fight.

I think you would need to be very naive to believe that the negotiators have not shifted the discussion towards what can be saved from the ashes of privatisation.
Hence the room full of lawyers talking about underpinning a legally binding agreement.

I have no confidence in the agreement being legally binding.
Several more years of job losses will render the CWU irrelevant because it will no longer be able to remain a stand-alone union.
Your "war" is the one we have been losing for the past few years.

[ronpetetrevchris]

You constantly criticise the union for making deals and yet you are willing to make the deal that ends us all, i have never heard such defeatest s**t!

Privatisation is the beginning of the end, its just how long it takes us to die! We should NOT be considering this before we have made a go of it!

[k979aaa]

You constantly criticise the union for making deals and yet you are willing to make the deal that ends us all, i have never heard such defeatest s**t!

Privatisation is the beginning of the end, its just how long it takes us to die! We should NOT be considering this before we have made a go of it!

Who would have bought a company with a militant workforce WE need action and we need it NOW!.

[fishtank]

Your "war" is the one we have been losing for the past few years.

It's not my war,If it had been it would have been far more bloody from the start.I didn't put us in this precarious position,in fact I argued explicitly that this is where we would end up if we got too close to the employer and embedded ourselves in a flawed modernisation program which was only designed with privatisation in mind but here we are nonetheless.

Sending the membership out believing they are fighting privatisation when the leadership are negotiating surrender terms can only end badly and hasten the end of the union.

[fishtank]

You constantly criticise the union for making deals and yet you are willing to make the deal that ends us all, i have never heard such defeatest s**t!

I'm not willing to make any deal,I'm warning against a less than honest approach with the membership that will ultimately backfire.
The membership have been lied to enough by reps.

[Bethesda]

With the right T and C privatisation could surely generate more revenue and subsequently wages and jobs- isn't half the issue the public not knowing the true cost of standard mail, companies taking advantages of loopholes and red tape. If it was regulated by ownership and driven, not left to rot and uncared for by the government, surely there would be improvements.

TBH I see the current affairs in Syria and the imminent Firefighter strikes a real excuse for the government to sell off RM for the funds.....

[dvbuk55]

Well privatisation isn't going away either it's this year or next. The biggest danger is the job losses and I think it will be deliveries that suffer the most. RM are very quiet about the parcel/packet delivery method.........does anyone know? What is also worrying is that RMs lawyers and the CWU lawyers are closeted somewhere thrashing out the legalities of what..........some sort of deal? The membership need to know where we stand in an industrial dispute ,,,,,,,,,,, are we fighting or are we dealing? There's little point in bringing the troops out only to capitulate to another half arsed deal. We need to know what we are asking for in plain and simple terms.

[taxi4leighton]

taking into account camerons devasting defeat in the commons over Syria.perhaps he wont be looking forward to conflict over privatisation.

[Danelectro]

I think the National Briefing confirmed that this fight is not lost if the company is partial privatised

It will be a partial privatisation of the whole company including parcel force. Clearly you have seen in past privitsations that then outsourcing , franchising etc takes place.

First of all if we want to be clear about things then does 'partial privatisation' still mean that 90% will be sold or has that percentage been dialled down?

If the fight is not lost then does that mean we are fighting for the 3 year legally binding agreement to be extended and where is the line in the sand ? how many years are acceptable ? The 3 year 'protection' offered by Royal mail is really at best 2 years and amounts to nothing more than a stay of execution.

[Danelectro]

Only 12 000 members have sent their postcards in concerning their opposition to the pension attack

well thats a case of over egging the pudding.Members already made their feelings known in the consultative ballot absolutely nothing to be gained by setting a postcard sending test which as you have suggested has backfired.

Collective strength is what we need and the time would been better spent on the shop floor counteracting the onslaught of Royal Mail propaganda since the CB.

[clashcityrocker]

...... when the leadership are negotiating surrender terms can only end badly and hasten the end of the union.

If they are negotiating surrender terms, (and I don't doubt that is what the lawyers are doing) I don't see the point in calling for strike action.
The 2 or 3 year stay of execution is of little value to most of us who have more than 2 or 3 years left of our working life.
You can't negotiate a partial destruction of our terms and conditions.
You can't negotiate a partial destruction of our pensions.
You can't negotiate a partial wholesale job losses. (And how many less union members would actually mean the end of the CWU?)

If there is no appetite for a fight, then let's pack up and go home now before anyone gets hurt.

[dvbuk55]

I must admit I have mixed feelings about all this and many more must have those same doubts but I will vote YES and I'll stand the picket as always even if there is little to be gained - apart from a few quid I don't see what we can lose that we wouldn't have lost anyway without a strike.

[fishtank]

If there is no appetite for a fight, then let's pack up and go home now before anyone gets hurt.

The only alternative to accepting that privatisation will probably happen and repositioning the battle in an attempt to fight for as much as we can salvage is to send the members out indefinitely and drag the company to its knees sending potential investors fleeing in all directions.
Part of me likes this option,It's where my heart lies.

Most of the rest of me including my head understands that the company would be unlikely to recover from this and would be sold off as junk,most if not all of us would be out of a job and the union,naturally would be finished.

I do very much believe that a fight is necessary but I think it needs to be fought on our terms and fighting privatisation is not on our terms it's the government's terms.We've kind of walked into a trap over privatisation in that although the public are mostly against it if it can be played by the government as a battle against the communist intransigent union Daily Mail Man will lap it up and Cameron can have his Thatcher moment he so obviously craves.

If we position the strike in the member's minds as being about privatisation the government will know exactly how to defeat the strike...just sell us off at any price to anyone.

We need to start a fight with our employer that we can continue even if we are sold,a basic fight to protect our terms and conditions that the members will accept will be continued whoever owns us,not a fight about privatisation that will obviously collapse the minute we are sold.

[dvbuk55]

TBH I think privatisation is a lost cause, whatever the partiality, what we need to concentrate on is terms, conditions, pensions and pay each one in isolation or taken as a whole can be trotted out time after time whoever the new masters are, what are we going to do about privatisation once it's happened - we can certainly bitch about it but it ain't going to change a thing.

[cloherty1976]

Fishtank says exactly what I think but my worry is we will not even get a payrise that is offered and end up with nothing. She is a clever and very strong women with great intelligence in these situations and will sh back down and what are the government telling her.