CWU Follow

Around 70 people came to a hustings meeting in central London for the candidates for general secretary of the postal workers' CWU union last week. John Keggie, the present union deputy general secretary, is standing against Billy Hayes, a union national officer.

We fund them, they whack us I am fed up with our union giving the Labour Party hundreds of thousands of pounds while in government that party attacks us. I am a postal worker in the Communication Workers Union (CWU). New Labour is pushing "joint ventures" and privatisation which are a huge threat to our jobs and conditions.

Royal Mail workers should vote no to the 3.2 percent pay deal recommended by the majority of the CWU union's postal executive. After months of negotiations Post Office bosses conceded a further 0.1 percent at the last moment. This was enough for the union's leaders to halt plans for a strike ballot.

POSTAL workers will face serious challenges this year as reports in the press are saying that Post Office bosses and the government are preparing to attack them and their CWU union. Fortunately there are plenty of signs that postal workers are prepared to resist any attacks.

BT CONCERN IS growing among BT workers over the company's massive new restructuring programme, labelled NewGRID. Some of the biggest union meetings for years have been taking place around the country over the plan, and now three key London engineering branches of the workers' CWU union have called a mass meeting. NewGRID will affect all BT workers, and the company wants to end all current demarcation and grading structures.

ACTION GETS results. That's the conclusion after the first national strike action in BT for 13 years looks to have forced the company to retreat. Britain's most profitable company had been ignoring complaints from workers in its call centres over their conditions. So 4,000 call centre workers staged a one day strike last month. A second strike was called off by the CWU union after a deal was struck.

SOME 4,000 BT call centre workers at 37 workplaces were due to stage the second of a series of one day strikes on Friday of this week. The fight is over bullying managers, understaffing and work targets. There were picket lines on most of the affected offices on the last strike day. Talks between the workers' CWU union and BT were still taking place as Socialist Worker went to press.

HUNDREDS OF Parcelforce workers struck unofficially for two days at the Canning Town site in east London last week. They won brilliant solidarity from other depots. But national union officials condemned their action. Then they narrowly persuaded a mass meeting to agree a return to work with very little gained from management. A CWU union member at Canning Town Parcelforce told Socialist Worker, "We have been shunted back to work when with a bit more support from the top we could have won."