Home
Wildcats Return With A Roar
report | prols 11/2003
On the post strike and other wild actions in the UK
We could have borrowed this headline of last weeks English Anarchist
publications, but we actually nicked it from the
Financial Times of the 6 November. The wildcat strikes are back, after
the work stoppages at Heathrow airport, there have been
wild actions by the postal workers and the fire fighters in the last
two weeks. How can this be? The financial times sways between
panic and mechanic. Panic: "Wildcats breed wildcats, unofficial action
by postal workers spread across the country like wildfire, as
the 24-hour news media fanned the flames." Mechanic: "The old labour
legislation of the Tories is to blame. If the union strikes
did not have to give four weeks notice, then there would not be any
need for these unofficial actions. The labour legislations need
reworking." There are a few impressions from events, newspaper
articles, an early morning visit to a picket line and a talk with a
friend who is a postman himself.
Background
There has been restructuring of the national postal service in the last few years with permanent to-ing and fro-ing between
negotiations and agreements, between unions and management on a national level and conflicts and adjustment problems in the
actual daily postal work. Amongst other issues in the centre of these conflicts are various "rationalisation" measures:
* The daily deliveries will be cut from two, to once a day, cutting the workforce by about 30,000
* The closure of 3,000 to 9,000 post offices
*
The workers should be able to cover various jobs, or "demarcation",
e.g. the drivers should deliver letters, if there is not enough driving
work.
* Workers should stay longer or leave earlier according to the amount of work coming in.
* The union should be focused on co-operation and the shop stewards and
other reps would have less paid time off for union work.
At the same time the management are trying to undermine local
autonomy with new technologies, which looks pretty bad so far.
The commissioned new modern European sorting office near Heathrow, that
was due to open in January 2002, faces even
longer delays in being ready. In May 2003 it became known that the
costs have already risen from the planned 180 million pounds,
380 million pounds. This new sorting office would replace nine other
sorting offices, which have all been problematic centres of
workers power.
In August 2003 the CWU (Communication Workers Union) called
for a national strike for higher wages. A month of internal
repression from the management and a media campaign against "post
chaos", meant that by September, the vote was 48,038
against the strike and only 46391 for it. But we can see that this vote
against a national strike, which was only ever going to be a
nicely timed union token, is not necessarily a sign of the desperation
of the postal workers. As it turns out they would
rather trust their own unmediated strength and organisation, as some
calculated symbolic action.
Shortly after the "lost" vote there were a few wildcat strikes
in Oxford and official strikes for "London Weighting" in London. In
this situation the management thought it was in a strong position due
to the vote against a national strike and therefore the isolation
of the workers and it tried to worsen the conditions at the local
level. The post offices in London play a doubly important role
here: firstly because such a large part of the national post goes
through London and secondly because the largest concentration of
recalcitrant workers. After the official strikes in London the
management in the various offices pushed through the so-called
"back to work" agreements. New contracts that for example included
overtime plans to clear the backlog of work, but also
broadened out the tasks of individual workers. It was clearly a
provocation...
Strike
The wildcat strike began at the end of October 2003 in, at the same time and independently, at Greenford mail centre, which
was a knock on from a dispute at the nearby delivery office at Southall and at an office in Dartford, London, after a driver
refused to deliver the letters that were building up due to the official strike, to another office with other workers. He was
sacked for this and his 400 colleagues reacted immediately with a spontaneous work stoppage. The management ensured the spread
of the strike by attempting to take the post to other offices. The management knew it was a provocation, but reckoned without
such decisive action.
Within
eleven days 20,000 to 25,000 workers were out, mostly from London and
the South East. More than 16 million letters per day were piling up and
after a few days 10,000 post boxes across London were sealed off. A few
companies were complaining such as a camera film developers
whose factories were not receiving the films to process, and the
supermarket Tesco threatened to give their business to a private
firm. But this was a part of the propaganda war as it was only one
minor contract to deliver books and it turned out not to be a
definite cancellation anyway.
There were emergency meetings between the post service
management, the government, union officials and employer
bodies. The management were publicly trying to reduce the issues to
London Weighting in order to isolate them from the rest of the
country. On the 29 October the CWU head office sent a standard legal
disclaimer as an open letter "How to solve the problem of
unofficial strikes", in which they officially distance themselves from
the strikes and stated that management are holding them
responsible none the less. They called for immediate return to work
without repressions.
"It was read out by the head manager at our strike meeting to try and
put us off - when the union guy came he downplayed it as what 'they
have to say and say every unofficial strike'."
The management did not respond, but instead send employees,
mostly managers who can also do some work, from other parts of
the country in as scabs into the conflict zone. They were delivering
special items if necessary - which they tried to maintain during the
strike -
the lucrative 'special' priority services, but by the end they had
abandoned it.
On the 1 November the Guardian published the internal memo
sent by the central office to the local post managers instructing
them how to deal with the strikers. Basically to use every kind of
spying technique going from the use of video cameras to cutting
in on strike meetings in order to take the "right steps" against the
strikers. Workers told us that managers in post workers uniforms
were driving around London in post vans in order to give the impression
that the strike was not going so well.
This action was supported by the media, which went on about the "return
to work". On the 3rd November, straight after the management climed
down and confirmed that there would be no repression, sackings or local
deals would not take place, the strike ended. One day later the
fire fighters in various parts of the country walked out on a wildcat
strike, because the pay rise they fought for in the last strike has
still not been paid...
Picket Line
"On the 31 October we went to a picket line outside Mount
Pleasant, a large sorting office in Central London. It wasn't a
picket line in the usual sense, but about 20 middle aged men standing
around outside the main entrance and chatting to each
other, while a few employees slipped more or less hastily into the
building. No leaflets, collection buckets or posters. A security
guy was standing in the entrance but didn't really have hard job, as
there were no attempts to stop people going in. We talked with
one striker, probably a union rep. He pretty much told us what we knew
from the media, or what one would say to strangers in such
a situation: "We have tried not to have this strike, but the management
reacted with repression. Here in Mount Pleasant
99% of the workers are out. The strike is locally organised."
One of the other there told us that management workers from Birmingham
have been ferried in to work there and are staying at
the holiday in round the corner. Also that the management have been
putting their internal police onto people, and for reasons of
"postal security measures" are not stopping at the private sphere. The
management were also opening side doors to let people in, so
they would not have to go through the main entrance. Many of these
people are "casuals", i.e. temp workers or those with
temporary contracts. The whole atmosphere on the picket line was rather
steeped with paranoia than with closed-ness. Apart
from us there was a film team, a few posters from the SWP dominated
"postworker" (www.postworker.org.uk) demanding solidarity. But no sign
of solidarity from the fire station directly across the street. Maybe
it was still to early in the morning. The
pictures on the TV of picket lines were a bit different, with beer and
barbeques..."
From the inside
Not content with the offerings of the Media and let with
questions from our Strike-Hag experience, we visited a friend a few
days
later, who has worked as a postman for the last few years. There was
leek and potato soup to go with the weather and his toddling
two-year-old daughter.
"The management seemed better prepared than the last unofficial strike in 2001. This strike had a bit of a lockout character,
coming from management's hope to enforce the national agreements locally.
On
the other hand there was less conflict between the union leaders and
the rank and file than last time because since then a
more 'radical leadership' was elected. It is the shop stewards who are
exchanging information between the striking centres. The
official union publication is worse than useless. Better is the
newsletter from the SWP orientated rank and file group
'Postworker'. Where we work we got to know about the beginning of the
wildcat strikes from a union rep, our shop
steward. He called for a meeting to tell us what was going on. (The
meetings take place in the canteen, or in the car park). So,
everybody went to this meeting, and the first thing is the main manager
there, wanting to talk to us about what was going on,
tried to read out the disclaimer from the CWU, but we didn't give him a
chance. The management were holding the union guy in
their offices, in line with the official instructions of what to do in
such situations. They later let him speak, but tried to catch him
out 'inciting' us to strike.
He tried to get round this by simply telling us what was going on with
the strike and telling us that it was up to us, how we wanted to react.
When a bloke, who was not in the union called for a strike, the union
guy said 'Well here is a suggestion, let's vote on it.' It was then
just a formality
where everyone raised their hands and voted for a strike. There may
well have been a few there who would have wanted to not strike right
away, but just refused the work from the striking centres, or scab
work. Sooner or later we would be asked to deal with work coming from
the mail centre that was already on strike and thus this work would
have been handled by managers to get it to us, and at that point we
would have refused and walked out.
The choice before us then was to wait till we were actually asked to
deal with some work that was 'scab work' or to more pro-actively say
'they've suspended people at the mail centre', they are out, lets go
out in support. It was this more aggressive and immediate response that
the non-union rep proposed and the union rep took as the suggestion for
us to vote on.
For most of the people being on strike meant staying at home.
There was no need for a real picket line, because it was clear that
everyone would strike anyway. For 170 workers there were at most 20 to
30 people on the picket line. There are also casuals
working with us, but they didn't cross the picket line. (Casuals come
from agencies and are called up as and when needed. There
is definitely a division between them and us. There are also
post-workers on limited contracts, but they work alongside us and are
treated by the workers and managers the same as the permanent staff.
Most do get permanent contracts eventually).
The only ones who ignored the picket line are the manager and cleaning workers, who we don't have a good connection with
anyway. The atmosphere goes between a barbeque evening, to 'we'll show them' to fear that the strike could go on too long."
After the end of the strike on the 4th of November
"After the negotiations the CWU and the management called for a return
to work as they had a settlement. Because the next
morning we still didn't know anything about the content of this
agreement, we carried on striking. One day later it became clear
that there would be no repression of the strikers and no local 'back to
work contracts', which were not voted on. The main
feeling was 'we won'. The basis for the strikes was an attempt to
undermine the union and push through changes that had not been
voted on. Now it is clear that they 'have to talk to us'.
If the management would have managed to break the strike things would
be worse now. It was a defensive, but successful strike.
The issue is we broke the anti strike legislation. In this case even
the headquarters union official were not trying very hard to
enforce the law and the local union reps were actively working against
the law.We broke through the unions officials 'anti-strike'
politics again, and we were successful when we did."
Whether it is the promised general return to the wildcats and whether it lies in an increase of consciousness of the workers or
an incremental ineffectiveness of the given legal framework, is hard to say. We will see what the winter brings. Amongst other
things there is announced actions by the London Tube workers, the teachers and in the a nuclear power station, and apart from
that the successful element of surprise (again)...
London, November 2003
