Up to 50,000 postal workers jobs were put at risk yesterday after the unelected Secretary of State for Business Lord Peter Mandelson announced that he plans to sell off parts of the Royal Mail.
The Three CWU branches in the current ballot for strike action over mail centre closures are the Coventry area branch, the Eastern No 6 branch and the Northamptonshire amalgamated branch.
Campaigners fear that the government is preparing to hand the running of a bank account used by four million pensioners and other claimants to a private firm.
As Royal Mail prepared to announce profits of over £177 million, around 500 postal workers and supporters marched in Crewe last Saturday to demand the local mail centre is kept open.
Business secretary Baron Peter Mandelson this week threw down the gauntlet to the trade union movement by announcing that, in his view, Royal Mail should be "part privatised".
Postal Workers at Copperas Hill mail centre in LIverpool, which is earmarked for closure, refused to cross a picket line put up by striking Romec engineers on Monday of this week.
Kay Gibbs, the last of the "Bristol 3" – three CWU union members who were sacked after last year’s national postal workers’ strike – has been reinstated.
