Posted by Vegetable Man
on October 29, 2009, 7:06 pm
Royal Mail bosses' scabbing plans exposed
Wednesday 28 October 2009
by Paul Haste
Post workers have exposed Royal Mail bosses' plans to run a scabbing operation on the eve of the third national post strike in two weeks.
Some 43,000 workers in huge mail centres and trucking depots across Britain are set to walk out before dawn tomorrow if post executives failed to reach an agreement with the post workers' union CWU.
But as management were uncovered setting up a "scab's charter" by offering to smuggle strike-breakers into mail delivery offices to work, CWU leaders threatened court action to stop Royal Mail exploiting unemployed workers as cover for strikers.
A letter sent out by Royal Mail executives to some post workers urged them to cross picket lines by "transferring to a different office or switching shifts.
"You do not have to wear a uniform and we can arrange for you to be driven to work or we can provide an escort for entering and leaving your place of work," the letter, entitled Coming to work, stated.
But post bosses, whose refusal to negotiate changes to working practices that have led to thousands of job losses and effective pay cuts with the union has sparked the strikes, are facing increased resistance to their plans.
Right-to-work campaigners picketed 400 agency workers at a giant Royal Mail warehouse in Dartford, near London, at dawn yesterday to encourage them to refuse to sort the letters piling up as a result of last week's solid national strikes.
Health worker Jim Fagan joined the picket to oppose the scab operation because "it is the first sign of what we are going to see across the public sector - employers becoming increasingly more aggressive in order to make cuts and to reduce services.
"That's why I think it's important that the postal workers make sure they win this dispute," he stressed.
Employment agencies such as Manpower have been exposed trying to lure unemployed workers into "seasonal jobs" paid at the paltry £5.80 per hour minimum wage - even less than the postal workers' £9 an hour average wage.
Royal Mail management has claimed that the 30,000 workers will be directly employed, but the CWU argues that the agency recruits were clearly being taken on as temporary staff to do the work of striking workers.
"The Conduct of Employment Agencies Regulations 2003 states that 'an employment business may not supply a temporary worker to a hirer to replace an individual taking part in an official strike or any other official industrial dispute'," a CWU spokesman pointed out.
Morning Star
Responses: