The British postal workers union CWU has warned it will fight the new government’s plan topartly privatise Royal Mail by seeking a private investor and is already threatening industrial
action.A Postal Services Bill was one of the key measures outlined yesterday in the traditional Queen’sSpeech presenting the new government’s plans to the UK Parliament. “My Government will modernisethe Royal Mail, in partnership with employees, and will ensure it benefits from private sectorcapital and disciplines,” the Queen declared.
The bill would seek to tackle the fundamental and longstanding problems facing Royal Mail andwould enable an injection of private capital, along with other measures, to help Royal Mail andensure the provision of the universal postal service, the government stated. It would safeguard thefuture of Royal Mail and the Post Office network, give employees a secure future and give consumersand businesses a service they can depend on.
The main elements of the Postal Services Bill will be “enabling the disposal of shares in theRoyal Mail to third parties that could raise equity for reinvestment in the business”, whileretaining Post Office Limited in public ownership due to “the important social and economic roleplayed by post offices in communities throughout the UK”.
Other measures will be to resolve the problems surrounding Royal Mail’s pension deficit,potential changes to the regulatory framework for postal services, and exploring options foremployee engagement at Royal Mail “to enable management and the workforce to work together to meetRoyal Mail’s significant challenges and enable all to share in its future success”.
But in response the Communication Workers Union described the plans as “old politics” with nopublic mandate and warned against splitting the postal delivery service from the post officenetwork.
Billy Hayes, CWU general secretary, said: “The coalition government has read this wrong.Privatising public services is deeply unpopular. Breaking up Royal Mail Group and flogging parts toprivate companies will damage services and lead to price hikes for customers. The commitments givenon post offices are misleading and disingenuous. Breaking the link with Royal Mail could takevaluable business away from the Post Office while leading to greater costs for Royal Mail. The postoffice network is an expensive but vital community service but today’s proposals place the PostOffice in grave danger of further waves of closures.
“We will fight these proposals. There’s no mandate from the public to privatise Britain’s postalservices, it’s not supported by the public and it’s not supported by postal workers,” hedeclared.
Deputy general secretary Dave Ward already told the union’s annual conference in Bournemouth onMonday that the union “will not hesitate” to take industrial action “to defeat privatisation”.
The CWU took strike action last year and heavily lobbied Labour MPs to successfully block theformer government’s efforts to part-privatise the British postal operator.
