CWU opposes final sell-off of Royal Mail

[POSTMAN]

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Responding to announcement today (Thursday) by the Chancellor to sell off the government's remaining shares in Royal Mail, the general secretary of the CWU, Dave Ward, said:

Dave Ward GS

"Today's announcement shows the Tories true colours, they don't stand up for working people; instead they are only interested in privatisation dogma and making the rich richer.

"Any attempt to undermine the legally binding agreement that protects Royal Mail workers' terms and conditions will be defended through strike action"

"Neither do they have any interest in maintaining services to the public. And selling off the final 30 per cent of Royal Mail threatens the very existence of the one-price-goes-anywhere, six-day delivery service that Royal Mail provides to 29 million UK addresses.

"When the first part of this privatisation was completed by the Coalition we were told that this was because Royal Mail needed private capital to invest in its future, but if you ask the workforce they have seen hardly any new investment but have witnessed the worst type of short term investors making a killing without any regard to the long term future of the company or the services it provides to the public.

"As a minimum, if this Government wanted to say they were interested in the workers then they could at least increase the workers' stake in the company.

"The CWU will oppose this final part of the sell-off and continue to campaign against unfair competition and the race to the bottom, which privatisation inevitably brings. Both existing, and any new shareholders should be in no doubt - any attempt to undermine the legally binding agreement that protects Royal Mail workers' terms and conditions will be defended if necessary through strike action."

[Homer]

P***ing in the wind comes to mind

[bridget]

Rich richer and I wonder how much a year your on Dave ward,you have nothing in common with the greater majority of postman we are just another step on your political ladder ,a strike is the last thing we need,the upper echelons of the cwu are champagne socialists,get away from your desk and meetings with self serving cwu reps and talk to some postman confidentially,fed up with Mercedes driving lefties telling me their fighting for my rights.

[mailman71]

Rich richer and I wonder how much a year your on Dave ward,you have nothing in common with the greater majority of postman we are just another step on your political ladder ,a strike is the last thing we need,the upper echelons of the cwu are champagne socialists,get away from your desk and meetings with self serving cwu reps and talk to some postman confidentially,fed up with Mercedes driving lefties telling me their fighting for my rights.

Get a grip the union has to put up a fight or terms and conditions will be driven down,this right wing government won't stop till they have destroyed all the unions.

[red666bear]

Rich richer and I wonder how much a year your on Dave ward,you have nothing in common with the greater majority of postman we are just another step on your political ladder ,a strike is the last thing we need,the upper echelons of the cwu are champagne socialists,get away from your desk and meetings with self serving cwu reps and talk to some postman confidentially,fed up with Mercedes driving lefties telling me their fighting for my rights.

Get a grip the union has to put up a fight or terms and conditions will be driven down,this right wing government won't stop till they have destroyed all the unions.

Not a cat in hells chance of a strike.

[westham000]

Bridget, Dave Ward used to be a postman many years ago and worked his way up through the CWU to the position that he now holds. And for the other posties on here who assume he drives a merc you couldn't be more wrong. I drive a better car then him!

[toomuchcoke]

Rich richer and I wonder how much a year your on Dave ward,you have nothing in common with the greater majority of postman we are just another step on your political ladder ,a strike is the last thing we need,the upper echelons of the cwu are champagne socialists,get away from your desk and meetings with self serving cwu reps and talk to some postman confidentially,fed up with Mercedes driving lefties telling me their fighting for my rights.

The union should've looked upon privatisation as an opportunity, and started a scheme whereby us posties could contribute say £1/week (or more if we liked) into a scheme which bought shares. Okay, it would take a long time to get up to a notable fraction but if you're reinvesting the dividends received along the way the process accelerates over time! Say they'd had it rolled and ready to go for the start of December 2013 and further assume that 75000 posties decided to contribute £1/week ... Then by now the fund would own something like 295,500 shares and the dividend at the end of this month would be >£40k! Okay that number of shares would be 0.03% of the company, which makes it sound a whole lot less impressive, but it would be growing every week and every time a dividend was paid! (Continue it long enough and it would be growing more due to dividends than any contributions from us - compounding returns is a wonderful thing!)

As it is I'm reminded of when Malcolm Glazer announced his takeover attempt of Manchester United and the fans where "unimpressed". Obviously at that point they had no chance of doing anything about it, but they'd had 13 years of the club being a PLC when they could've being (slowly) buying it up.