Support the striking posties: save Royal Mail

It always depresses me when otherwise smart, kind, compassionate people put those qualities on hold when it comes to strikes. Knee-jerk union-bashing abounds with few asking exactly why it is that a postal worker would sacrifice thousands of pounds in salary and overtime in order just to have a barney with the management and annoy the public.

Victoria Coren wrote a brilliant piece in yesterday's Observer arguing powerfully for supporting the posties as they fight to save yet another bit of the family silver from being privatised by greedy bosses and a discredited Lord nobody voted for.

When the dickheads who run Royal Mail cancelled second deliveries, sacked postmen and made a £321 million profit from a crap service made even crappier, did they pass this on to the hard-working posties or the public? Did they invest? Did they heck! They froze wages and awarded themselves giant bonuses with the proceeds. Coren writes:

'So the profit benefited neither the postmen nor we hapless post-receivers – all of whom are, technically, the owners of the Royal Mail. It's a national company. It's ours. But we'd have been better off if our business had carried on making a loss. The profit simply inspired further cuts and a worse service. It's like telling your wife: "I got a juicy £5,000 bonus this year, so we had better cancel that holiday."'

When will the anti-union public geddit, that the much vaunted "modernisation" as promoted by Lord Mandelson of the Dark Side, means cutting spending by running down the service and treating workers like coolie labour, calling the money they save "profit" and then awarding it to themselves. What sort of society puts up with that?

Some 76 per cent of posties voted for the strike. Is three-quarters of the workforce mad, bad and masochistic? Or is there something else happening that we never get to hear?

Luckily, most people have wised up to yet another privatisation scam and support the strikers. Good luck, guys and gals. Save our Royal Mail.

Hat tip Bill Greenwell

Thanks to Hagley Road To Ladywood for this great piece by a postie on the causes of the strike and the myth of shrinking mail volume as claimed by Fraud Mandelson, and the true nature of the competition.

'None of these companies has a universal delivery obligation, unlike the Royal Mail. In fact they have no delivery obligation at all.'

And Harpy Marx provides this link to John Pilger's New Statesman article, The postal strike is our strike.

'Since coming to office, New Labour has done its best to destroy the Post Office as a highly productive public institution valued with affection by the British people. ... The truth is, the Royal Mail offers a quality service at half the price of its privatised rivals Deutsche Post and TNT. ... Postal workers deserve the support of all honest, decent people, who are reminded that they may be next on the list if they remain silent.'

Support the striking posties: save Royal Mail

It always depresses me when otherwise smart, kind, compassionate people put those qualities on hold when it comes to strikes. Knee-jerk union-bashing abounds with few asking exactly why it is that a postal worker would sacrifice thousands of pounds in salary and overtime in order just to have a barney with the management and annoy the public.

Victoria Coren wrote a brilliant piece in yesterday's Observer arguing powerfully for supporting the posties as they fight to save yet another bit of the family silver from being privatised by greedy bosses and a discredited Lord nobody voted for.

When the dickheads who run Royal Mail cancelled second deliveries, sacked postmen and made a £321 million profit from a crap service made even crappier, did they pass this on to the hard-working posties or the public? Did they invest? Did they heck! They froze wages and awarded themselves giant bonuses with the proceeds. Coren writes:

'So the profit benefited neither the postmen nor we hapless post-receivers – all of whom are, technically, the owners of the Royal Mail. It's a national company. It's ours. But we'd have been better off if our business had carried on making a loss. The profit simply inspired further cuts and a worse service. It's like telling your wife: "I got a juicy £5,000 bonus this year, so we had better cancel that holiday."'

When will the anti-union public geddit, that the much vaunted "modernisation" as promoted by Lord Mandelson of the Dark Side, means cutting spending by running down the service and treating workers like coolie labour, calling the money they save "profit" and then awarding it to themselves. What sort of society puts up with that?

Some 76 per cent of posties voted for the strike. Is three-quarters of the workforce mad, bad and masochistic? Or is there something else happening that we never get to hear?

Luckily, most people have wised up to yet another privatisation scam and support the strikers. Good luck, guys and gals. Save our Royal Mail.

Hat tip Bill Greenwell

Thanks to Hagley Road To Ladywood for this great piece by a postie on the causes of the strike and the myth of shrinking mail volume as claimed by Fraud Mandelson, and the true nature of the competition.

'None of these companies has a universal delivery obligation, unlike the Royal Mail. In fact they have no delivery obligation at all.'

And Harpy Marx provides this link to John Pilger's New Statesman article, The postal strike is our strike.

'Since coming to office, New Labour has done its best to destroy the Post Office as a highly productive public institution valued with affection by the British people. ... The truth is, the Royal Mail offers a quality service at half the price of its privatised rivals Deutsche Post and TNT. ... Postal workers deserve the support of all honest, decent people, who are reminded that they may be next on the list if they remain silent.'